Angéline de Montbrun

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Angéline de Montbrun

Angeline de Montbrun

Laure Conan



"Did you believe that this life was life?"

Lacordaire.



(Maurice Darville to his sister)


Dear Mina,

I saw her - I saw my Fleur des Champs, the fresh flower of
Valriant, - and believe me, the most beautiful rose the sun has
never made blush would not deserve to be compared to him. Yes,
my dear, I am at M. de Montbrun's, and I confess that my hand
trembled as he rang the doorbell.

- Monsieur and Mademoiselle have left, but they will
come home, said the servant, who received me; and she introduced me
in a very simple and very pretty living room, where I found Mme
Lebrun, who has been here for a few days.

I would have preferred to find no one there. Yet I did my best.
But waiting is a fever like any other.

I was hot, I was cold, my ears were buzzing
frightfully, and I answered randomly to this good Madame Lebrun who
looked at me with the indulgent air she always has when
tells him nonsense.

Finally, the door opened, and a cloud passed over my eyes Angeline
entered followed by his father. She was in an Amazon costume, which
looks better on him than I can say. And both reproached me for
not taking you away, like it was my fault.

Why did you persist in not coming with me? You would have been so
useful. I need to be encouraged.

The supper went happily, that is to say I was bitterly
stupid; but I didn't spill anything, and in the state of my nerves,
it's almost miraculous.

M. de Montbrun, even more amiable and more gracious at home
that elsewhere inspires me with a terrible fear, because I know that my
spell is in his hands.

Her daughter will never entertain a feeling that will not have its
full approval, or rather she could not experience it. She lives
in him much as the saints live in God. Ah! if our poor
father lived! He would know how to make me agree.

After tea, we went to the garden, of which I could not say anything;
I walked beside her, and all the flowers of earthly paradise
had been there, that I would not have looked at them. The adorable
country! she no longer has her dazzling winter whiteness
latest. She is tanned, my dear. _Halmed! _ What am I saying? is not it
an insult to the most beautiful skin and the most beautiful complexion in the world? I
I'm crazy and I despise myself. No, she is not tanned,

  But it seems we've gilded it
  With a ray of sunshine.

She was wearing a white muslin dress, and the evening wind
was playing in her beautiful flowing hair. His eyes - have you ever seen
of these beautiful lakes lost in the depths of the woods? of these beautiful lakes
that no breath has tarnished, and that God seems to have made
reflect the azure of the sky?

Back in the living room, she showed me the portrait of her mother, spicy
brunette to whom she does not look at all, and that of her father,
who she looks so much like. The latter seemed to me admirably painted.
But since the artistic talks of M. Napoléon Bourassa, in
a portrait, I dare to judge only the resemblance. This is
wonderful.

"I had it painted for you, my daughter," said M. de Montbrun; and
addressing me: Is it not that she will be without excuse if she
never forget me?

My dear, I made a response so horribly wrapped up and
clumsy, Angeline burst out laughing, and although she had the
teeth so beautiful, I don't like to see her laugh when it's my
costs.

You wouldn't believe how humbled I am at this embarrassment of
words that are so ordinary to me with her, and so foreign
elsewhere.

She begged me to sing, and I was delighted. Believe me, my little one
sister, we did not speak in the earthly paradise. No, in the days
of innocence, of love and of happiness, the man did not speak,
_he was singing._

You told me many times that I never sing so well in his
presence, and I can feel it. When she listens to me, then the holy fire
light up in my heart, so I feel I have _a divinity in
me._

I had taken my place a long time ago, and no one was breaking up
the silence. Finally M. de Montbrun said to me with the grace of which he
secret: _ "I would like to speak and I am still listening." _

Angeline seemed moved, and did not dream of hiding it, and,
to hide nothing from you, by withdrawing I had the mortification
to hear Mme Lebrun say to her niece:

"What a pity that a man who sings so well does not always know
what he says!"

I do not know what Mlle de Montbrun replied to this charitable regret.

Dear Mina, I am very worried, very disturbed, very unhappy.
What to say of M. de Montbrun? He himself came to lead me to my
room, and left me with the most cordial handshake.
I would have liked to hold him back, tell him why I came, but I
thought: "Since I still have hope, let us keep it."

I spent the night at the window, but time did not last me. that
the countryside is beautiful! what tranquility! what deep peace! and
what music in these vague rumors of the night!

We have very different habits here from ours. Imagine,
that before five o'clock M. de Montbrun was walking in his garden.

I was considering it when Angeline appeared, beautiful as the
day, radiant like the rising sun. She had her
straw hat, and she joined her father, who hugged her
against his heart. He seemed to be saying: "So come to me
take my treasure! ”

Dear Mina, what will I do if he refuses me? What can I do against him? Ah!
if it was only a question of deserving it.

See you soon, my little sister, I'm going to throw myself on my bed to
appear to have slept.

I kiss you.

Maurice.



(Mina Darville to her brother)


I wonder why you are so sad and so discouraged. Mr.
Montbrun received you cordially, what more did you want? Did you think
that he was waiting for you with the notary and the contract drawn up, to
say, "Take the trouble to sign."

As for Angeline, I would like to see her a little less serene. I see
from here her beautiful limpid eyes so similar to her father's. he
it is clear that for her you are only Mina's brother.

I don't know if, as you say, singing was the language of the first
man in earthly paradise, but I make sure it should
be yours under the present circumstances. Your voice delights her.

I saw her cry while listening to you sing, which, moreover, she does not
was not trying to hide, because he is the simplest person, the
most natural in the world, and, having never read novels, she never
don't worry about the tears that the penetrating sweetness of your song gives
made pour.

I, in such cases, I would reflect; I would be afraid of
tears.

My dear Maurice, I see that I have acted very wisely in refusing to
accompany you. You would have given me too much work. I like myself better
rest on my laurels from last winter.

Besides, I would have served you badly; I no longer feel my mind
prompt and easy to speak as it takes to get to
rescue of a lover who gets confused.

But, my dear, no dark thoughts. Angeline thinks you are distracted, and
suspect you of sacrificing to the muses. As for M. de Montbrun, he
too much sense to hold a poor lover responsible for his
speech.

I strongly approve of you admiring Angeline, but that's no reason
to belittle others. Really, I would be well to be pitied if I
was counting on you to find out what I'm worth.

Fortunately, many do me justice, and bad tongues
assure that an Anglican minister, whom you know well, will not end
forget his flock for me.

I don't want to quibble with you. Angeline is the most charming and the
higher of Canadian women. But who knows what I would be
became, under the direction of his father ...

So you are very afraid of this terrible man. I admit that he does not
does not seem made to inspire terror. But maybe I am
braver than another.

Besides, you know what interest he has in us. Last winter at
about ... whatever, - suppose some extravagance, - he
took me aside, and after calling me _ his poor orphan_, he
gave me the most severe and the most delicious of reprimands.
(Malvina B ... and other prophetesses of my knowledge, announce
that you will be the glory of the bar, but you will never speak like
him in private.)

I thanked him with the best of my heart, and he told me with this
expression that makes him so charming: - "There is pleasure in you
to scold. Angeline also has a good character, when I take her back,
she still kisses me. "

And I easily believed it - I am not the one who would doubt
the word of the most honest man in my country.

Yes, it is quite true that he holds your fate in his hands. Ah!
you say, if it was only a question of deserving it? Are you sure you don't have
not added in yourself:

  Appear, Navarrese, Moors and Castilians ...

What a pity that the time for chivalry has passed! Angeline likes
the valiant and the great blows of the sword.

During the four months she spent in the convent on the trip
of his father, we often went to sit under the maples of
the court of the Ursulines; and there we were talking about the knights. She
loved Beaumanoir, - the one who drank his blood in the
Thirty, - but his greatest admiration was for Duguesclin. She
liked to recall that before dying, the good constable asked for his
sword to fuck her.

Really, it's a shame that we are in the nineteenth century:
I would have attached Angeline's colors to your tears; then, instead
to take you to the boat, I would have given you the shot
the stirrup, and I would have climbed into the lonely tower, where a handsome
page would bring me news of your deeds.

Instead, it's the postman who brings me letters where you
extravagues, and for me it is humiliating the _wisdom_ of the family.
You know that M. de Montbrun often asks me, like Louis XIV to Mme
de Maintenon: "What does your solidity think?" You, you don't know me anymore
say nothing pleasant, and the profession of a lover's confidante is
most ungrateful in the world.

A thousand tenderness too tender for Angeline, and all that you will be worth
to his father. Tell him that I suspect him of considering his candidacy,
and a candidate, _that is vanity._

I make wishes so that you continue not to spill anything at the table.
I feared damage.

Do not delay asking the big question any longer. Have confidence. he
can't forget whose son you are, and of course he's not without
think about the future of his daughter, who has only him in the world.

My dear, the house is very sad without you.

I kiss you.

Mina.

PS - Doctor L ..., who smells something, came to me
to speak; but I am discreet. I only confessed to him that
you wrote to me that you had lost sleep.

`` Mercy, '' he said to me, `` we must send him narcotics,
you will see that he will forget himself to the point of giving a serenade.

And the doctor intoned in his finest falsetto:

  While in tears while praying, I watch,
  And sing in the night alone, away from her, on her knees ...

Forgive me for laughing. You may have the most beautiful voice in the land,
but take care, M. de Montbrun would say:

  The wind that comes through the mountain ...

Finish, and believe me, don't open your window too far to vague rumors
of the night: you could catch a cold, which would be a shame. Yes
absolutely you can't sleep, eh! well, make verses. We
will be quits to throw them into the fire when you return.

Mr.



(Maurice Darville to his sister)


Dear Mina,

You pretend to be bored of my confidences, but if I took you
word ... how you would display your seductions than hugs for
get me to say everything! Poor daughter of Eve! ...

But don't be afraid. I disdain easy revenge.

Besides, my heart is overflowing. Mina, I live under the same roof
that she, in the delicious intimacy of the family; and there is in
this house blessed a perfume which penetrates me and enchants me.

I feel so different from what I used to be. Any
enough to soften me, touch me to tears. Mina, I
would like to silence all the noise in the world around this nest of
foam, and love there in peace.

That she is beautiful! there is in her I do not know what sovereign charm
that takes away the spirit. When she is there, everything disappears from my eyes,
and I no longer know exactly if it is night or if it is day.

They say the man deeply selfish, deeply proud,
what is this power of love that would make me
bow down to her? that would make me give all my blood for
nothing - just for the sake of giving it to him?

This is all true. Don't laugh, Mina, and tell me what to do
tell his father. You know him better than I do, and I fear so much
go wrong, to upset him. Then he has in his mind a
a hint of mockery that you get along with very well, but that bothers me,
I, who am not a mocker.

Earlier, retired to my room to write to you, I forgot to
to start. The _beautiful dream so sweet to_ dream absorbed me completely,
and I was very surprised to see M. de Montbrun, who had entered
without my noticing it, and standing in front of me, looking at me
carefully.

He greeted my apologies with that seductive grace you admire
so loud, and as I stammered I don't know what to explain my
distraction, he crossed his arms, and said to me with his seriousness
mocking:

--That's it.

  Without hate and without love, you lived to think.

I was half angry, half confused. Would he have guessed? So
why are you laughing at me? Is it my fault, if my poor soul goes astray
in a paradise of dreams?

I kiss you.

Maurice.



(Mina Darville to her brother)


What is the point of chasing chimeras, or rather why not
not make realities? Go find M. de Montbrun, and - since
you must suggest the words to you, tell him: - "I love him, have mercy on
me."

It is not more difficult than that. But get your nerves under control, and
don't pass out at his feet. He likes temperaments well
balanced.

I know it by heart, and what he will ask himself is not
absolutely if you are in love to the ecstatic degree, if you will have
great successes, but if you have the strength to walk, no matter what,
in the path of duty.

Consider that he will draw your horoscope from your past. It is not from
those who believe that everything will be fine because everything has gone wrong.

You say I know him better than you do. It must be, because I have it
observed a lot.

I admit that I would fearlessly put it through any test,
and yet _it's a terrible thing to test a man ._
Notice that it wasn't a woman who said that. Women, at
instead of slandering their oppressors, work to discover them
some qualities, which is not always easy.

As for M. de Montbrun, we see at first glance that he is
perfectly attractive, and that's something, but he has
ideas to him.

So I know that as her wedding approaches, someone
risky in making representations to him about his unsuccessful choice
according to the world, he replied, without feeling at all, that his future
had the two wings of which the Imitation speaks: simplicity and
purity; and that that was perfectly enough for him.

We still remember this strange comment. You know he got bored
quickly become a soldier for the watch, and became a farmer. He has
proved that he did not intend to be just in name either.

Angeline told me that on her wedding day, her father went to her
job. Yes, my dear, - it is written in some intimate pages that
Mme de Montbrun left - in the morning he went to her
fields.

It was harvest time, and M. de Montbrun was in his
first fervor of agriculture. Yet if you want to think about it
was twenty-three, and rich and in love with his wife,
you will find the surprising thing.

What is hardly less is the conduct of Madame de Montbrun.

She had never heard of a married man behaving
sort; but after thinking about it, she says to herself that it is permissible not to
not act in everything like the others, that love of work, even
pushed to excess, is a valuable guarantee, and that if there were
someone more obliged than others to work, it was his
husband, robust as an oak. It's all written.

Besides, she thought, "a worker never has any _migraines_
ni de _diables blue »._ (Mme de Montbrun had a great contempt for
unfortunate people suffering from one or the other of these infirmities, and
probably she would have found much to say about a son-in-law who
_ gets lost in a paradise of reveries.) _

Anyway, taking her role as a farmer seriously, she
went to his kitchen, where for lack of black broth whose recipe is
lost, she made a soup for her lord and master, which she
was not far from mistaking for a resurrected Spartan, and the
soup made, she found it pleasant to take it to him.

Now, one of her husband's employees saw her coming, and as he had a
beautiful voice, and wit, he intoned happily:

  All roads should flourish,
  Should bloom, should sprout
  Where beautiful bride will pass.

M. de Montbrun heard, and like Cincinnatus, at the voice of the envoy
from Rome he left his job. With his straw hat in his hand, he
walked up to his wife, received the soup without batting an eyelid, and
gravely thanked his housewife, whom he led into the shade. Sitting down
on the grass, they ate the soup together, and Mme de Montbrun
assured that you do not have such a meal twice in your life.

This was nineteen years ago, but then like today,
there was a crowd of charitable souls always ready to deal
of their neighbor.

The story of the wedding made a noise, we made a hundred mockeries, which
greatly amused the authors of the scandal.

A little later, they rehabilitated themselves, to a certain point,
while going to see Niagara Falls.

This entry into the household pleases Angéline, and you should
to think. Slavish imitation is not my doing, but we will advise.
Here! I found. There is at the back of your cupboard a folio which,
of course would make you look serious if you snippet it on
your wedding day.

My dear Maurice, believe me, do not delay. I still tremble that
you're not going out with Angeline. And the way to act
of M. de Montbrun proves that he does not want us to say sweet nothings
to her daughter, or the divine word, if you like her better. You are the only one
that he admits in his intimacy, and this mark of esteem obliges you.
Besides, to abuse one's trust would be more than a fault,
would be awkward.

With you from the heart.

Mina.



(Maurice Darville to his sister)


You are a thousand times right. We must risk the terrible demand, but
I think he's doing it on purpose to disconcert me.

This morning, decided to put an end to it, I went to wait for him in his
work, where he usually goes early. I love
this room where Angeline has spent so many hours of her life; and if
I had the table on which Cicero wrote his finest
pleadings, I would give her for the little desk where she was doing
his homeworks.

The other night I asked her if she liked studying as a child.
always, she replied. And looked at his father with that adorable
coquetry which she has only with him. But I was so afraid of him!

Mina, I wonder how I manage to behave
sensibly. Deep down, I don't know at all.

To come back to my story, on the wall, in front of the desk
of M. de Montbrun, there is a small portrait of his wife, and a little
below, also suspended by a black ribbon, a photograph of
our poor father in a school hood. It is especially his face
tired and sick that I remember, and for me this young and
smiling face hardly resembles him.

I was contemplating him when M. de Montbrun entered. We talked about
past, from their college time. I had never seen him so cordial,
so loving. I thought the timing was right, and told her enough
awkwardly:

--It seems to me that you must regret not having a son.

He looked at me. If you had seen the sheer mischief in her beautiful eyes.

"Where does this worry come from, my dear," he replied? and, then, with
very serious: "Doesn't my daughter strike you as all that
what can I wish for? "

For those who like mockers, it was to be painted at this time. I
called on my courage, and I was going to speak very clearly, when
Angeline appeared at the window where we were seated. She put one of
her beautiful hands over her father's eyes, and on the other passed me
under the nose a tuft of lilac, all damp with dew.

--_ Shocking_, said M. de Montbrun. See how Maurice blushes for me
of your country manners.

--But, said Angeline, with the cool laugh you know, Monsieur
Darville may be blushing for himself. Do you know what it feels like
a poet who is watered with the tears of the night?

`` My daughter, '' he continued, `` one should never speak lightly of those
who make worms.

Nothing brings down an emotional man like a joke. I felt extinct
for the day. But I was watching her and it's a pleasure to
which my eyes don't know how to get used to.

If you had seen her, how she was in the bright light! Yes it's
well the fairy of youth! Yes, she has all the sparkle, all the
freshness, all the charm, all the radiance of the morning!

No, he won't have the heart to despair me! This situation is not
more tenable, and since I cannot speak, I will write.

M. de Montbrun spoke to me at length about you. He finds that you have too much
of freedom and not enough homework. He asked me how much you
had lovers nowadays, but I could not tell the
fair.

According to him, the atmosphere of adulation in which you live is not good for you.
According to him again, you have the flirtatious mood, and it would be better
for you to enter the seriousness of life.

I am telling you everything exactly. They speak of my voice in terms
obliging, but I would never dare say the same all at once.
Scolding young girls is a difficult art. To get away
to your credit, you have to have the size of Francis I, and this charm
in ways you call _montbrunage._

My dear Mina, how good I am here! I love this secluded house and
laughing woman who looks at the sea through its beautiful trees, and smiles at
its garden over a row of charming shrubs.

It is white, which is hardly visible, because plants
climbers run all over the walls, and boldly jump on the
roof. Angeline said: “Spring is very happy to have me. I have
so well done that everything is green. " Today we made a
very long walk. They wanted me to admire the bay of Gaspé,
show me the place where Jacques Cartier took possession of the country by
planting the cross. But Angeline was there, and I no longer know
watch it. Mina, how lovely she is! I'm ashamed to be so
troubled: this charming house seems made to shelter peace.
What would become of me, my God, if he refused? But I hope.

I kiss you, my little sister.

Maurice.



(Mina Darville to her brother)


I hope too. But writing instead of speaking is cowardice
pure. My dear, you are a coward.

If Angeline knew it! she who loves courage so much! Yes she likes
courage - like all women for that matter - and a long time ago
that we have decided it was a great condescension to accept
the tributes of those who never breathed the smell of gunpowder
and blood. For me, I have always regretted not having been born in
the early days of the colony, when every Canadian was a
hero.

Do not doubt it, it was the good weather for the Canadian women. It is true
that they sometimes learned that their friends had been scalped but
no matter, those of the day were worth mourning. Thereupon
Angeline shares all my feelings, and would like to have lived
time of his cousin of Lévis.

You should put jealousy aside, and talk to her often about this
valiant. She loves the memory of those days when the voice of Lévis
resounded sonorous, and she was indignant against the English who
not ashamed to deny him the honors of war. his father
listening with a charmed air.

My dear, we are fortunate enough not to have lived there
some hundred years. The victor of Sainte-Foy would have conquered the
father and daughter, and our Machiavellianism would have failed. As to
chivalrous Lévis, nobody told me anything, but I am inclined to
believe he was singing like the handsome Dunois: _Amour à la plus belle._

So they would like to bring me into the seriousness of life ...
seems like _flirter_ with a _Right Reverend_, that's something
quite serious.

Deep down I'm no more frivolous than any old man
politics, and I'm about as excited about my
contemporaries. As for having a flirtatious humor, that is pure slander.

M. de Montbrun will give me reason for his words, and he could well
come and make his remarks to me himself. So am I so imposing or
so unpleasant?

My dear Maurice, you wouldn't believe how I can't wait to hear your
beautiful voice in the house.

Since you've been in love, you don't always know what you're saying
but your voice sounds so sweet. You spoiled my ear, and
everyone I talk to seems to have a cold.

By the way, it seems that a French vessel will soon come to
Quebec. Thank God I am as royalist as the most august
Dowager of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; but that does not prevent
to love the tricolor "because it is still the standard of the
France ”, and ... I would like the French sailors to see
Angeline. Keep the prettiest girl in Canada hidden in a village
de Gaspé, it is a crime. Well eclipsed I would be, if she was
showed; but it does not matter, national honor above all.

I kiss you,

Mina.



(Maurice Darville to his sister)


I don't want Angeline to see the French sailors at all.
I'm counting on you to make them sing: _Vive la Canadienne! _
Be sure, we are all too tender for France, which
hardly thinks of Canadians, _exiles in their own homeland_, as
said Crémazie.

I don't want French sailors to court Mlle de
Montbrun, and tell him about battles and storms. But the
The most illustrious shadows worry me very little. "From Lévis, from
Montcalm, we _dira_ exploits », as long as it pleases him.

My dear, if I am not yet the happiest of men,
the less I am far from being unhappy.

But it is agreed that I will say everything. So my letter written, I
sent it to M. de Montbrun, and I went to the garden to wait
that he sent for me, which was a bit late. Do you have to tell you what
I endured ...?

Finally, a kind of duenna, which seems to me to hold the middle between
governess and servant, came to fetch me on behalf of her master.

Unfortunately, on the threshold of the door, I met Angeline,
who said to me: - Come see my swan.

And as you think, I followed her. How to refuse?

You may know that a stream runs in the garden, very wide and
beautiful. M. de Montbrun took the opportunity to give himself the luxury of a
small pond which is the prettiest thing you can see. Walnut trees
magnificent shade these beautiful waters, and the wild flowers
grow all over the edges and in the thick foam that
extends all around the pond. It's lovely, it's delicious, and
the swan thinks the same because he likes this place.

Bare-headed Angeline, a large piece of bread in her hand, walked in front
me. Every now and then she would turn to address a few
playful words. But when she arrived at the pond, she forgot about me.

His attention was divided among the birds singing in
the trees, and the swan that cradled softly on the water. But
the swan ends up absorbing it. She threw him crumbs of bread,
making him a thousand annoyances of which it is impossible to say the
charm and grace; and the bird seemed to take pleasure in being
admire. He stood in the water, plunged his beautiful neck into it, and
proudly skirted the flowery edges of this miniature lake where
reflected the setting sun.

--Is he handsome! is he handsome! said Angeline enthusiastically. Ah! if
Mina saw it! ...

She handed me the last crumbs of her bread, for me to her
throw away. The scorching rays of the sun slipping through the
foliage fell around her in sprays of fire. I closed the
eyes. I felt myself going crazy. She, noticing my confusion, me
naively asked:

"But, Monsieur Darville, what's the matter with you?"

Mina, all my resolutions escaped me. I tell him:

--I like You! And involuntarily I bend my knee in front of her
who holds happiness and life in his chaste hand.

I hadn't been able to think about what I was doing. In the
seeing dumbfounded, dumbfounded, my sanity returned, and I understood my
wrong. But before I could find a word, she had
faded away.

For me, a fiery joy burst in my heart, and I stood there
repeating to myself: "She knows, she knows that I love her."

I had completely forgotten that his father was waiting for me, and I was there
very mortified when someone came to remind me. This time I surrendered
without issue. He_ invited me to sit down next to him.

--He! well, he said, rolling my letter between his fingers,
so the explanation of the nonsense that you have been telling us for some
time.

I didn't answer, and as he remained silent, I took his hand
and tell him I would lose my mind or die.

"Let's say you have a terrible headache," he replied.

The hard part was done. I spoke to him without constraint in all
trust. I tell him many things, and it seems to me that I do not
spoke quite a bit. He looked very close to being moved, and you would
found perfectly charming; but I couldn't get any more
answers that: "I will consider it." Besides, he added, nothing
hurry. You are very young.

I tell him:

--I'm twenty-one.

`` Angeline is eighteen, '' he continued, `` but she is a child, and I
very much wants her to remain a child as long as possible.

It reminded me that I had abused his hospitality and I felt
to blush. He noticed it, and said to me very gently:

--If you see an indirect lesson in my words, you will
deceive. I believe in your delicacy.

These words humiliated me more than any reproaches. My faith,
I could not stand it and despite the terrible risk of falling in
esteem, I confessed to him of my fine conduct.

- Did she laugh? he asked me.

The question seemed cruel to me, and despite everything I was charmed
answer that she had not laughed. His face darkens a lot,
and he said to me very coldly:

--I regret your indiscretion more than you can imagine.

I was about as uncomfortable as you can get. We rang the
supper, which probably reminded him that I was his guest, for he
became himself again, and invited me graciously to come to the table.

We found there, with the ladies, an old priest, pastor of
neighborhood, who, during the meal, told us very nicely the
work of a bullfinch, in the expense of building a nest in a
rosebush in his garden.

Obviously these kind words were addressed to Mlle de Montbrun,
but this time, she hardly seemed more interested than Madame
W ... to her husband's stories, when they last more than three
quarters of an hour. Seeing this, the good priest politely inquired about the
swan. She blushed divinely, and replied je ne sais quoi
no one understood.

M. l'Abbé, quite perplexed, looked at M. de Montbrun with an air which
seemed to say, "Will you explain this to me?"

After supper, he wanted to see Friby, - Friby, that's a pretty
perfectly tamed squirrel, which itself opens the door of its
cage. M. le Curé ensures that a churchwarden in charge does not open
better the door of the work bench.

Angeline, who is used to having so much fun with the kindness of
the squirrel, just threw a few nuts at him with one hand
distracted. She stood silent aside. his father
observed him without appearing to do so, and from time to time threw me a
look that said, if I'm not mistaken: "May the devil take you
with your extravagances. How dare you disturb this
child?"

Mina, my contrition was gone like snow in the sun at least
if I had any left, it was not noticeable. You know

  Her eyelids, never on her beautiful lowered eyes,
  Didn't veil his gaze ...

Now she doesn't dare look at me anymore; and tell you what I'm feeling
seeing her confused and blushing in front of me! Yes, she will love me!
Do you hear, Mina? I tell you she will love me!

My little sister, I cherish you, but I don't have time for you
write it down. I'm going to end the evening on the moss, where
I said to him: "I love you."

Maurice.



(Mina Darville to her brother)


I told you that you would end up doing something crazy. But to
you seem to me more to envy than to blame. The first moment
past, M. de Montbrun must have understood that _the hunger, the opportunity,
the tender grass _... Besides, Angeline questioned you. I can not
to think without laughing about this naivety. I can't wait to talk to Mr.
de Montbrun to tell him: "See the inconvenience of never reading
of novels, and to have as a close friend only a person so wise
than me!"

So, Maurice, you got down on your knees. It is true that it was on the
foam; no matter what, I know these beautiful things won't happen to me
never. I am quite willingly slipped the sweet words but I have
not _the sovereign charm that takes away the spirit_, and we do not think
at all to bow down.

This does not prevent me from being happy that Angeline has learned to
look down - those beautiful eyes that I never could tell the
just the color - but sorry, it's up to you to describe them.

I'll admit that this story of the pond gave me a beautiful
fear. Please, what were you going to do there? I'm not used to
criticize the sun, but in such a circumstance, throw wreaths
fire around Angeline, it was very imprudent. By the way, maybe
have you seen more than there was? No matter, you did well
close eyes.

You say she will love you. I hope so, my dear, and maybe
Would she love you already if she loved her father less? This ardent
tenderness absorbs it. As for M. de Montbrun, I have always believed him
favorably disposed. If you did not suit him or so, he
would have kept you at a distance like he did for so many others.

I strongly approve of you for having confessed your equipment to him. First the
frankness is a beautiful thing, and then Angéline, who does not hide
never nothing to his father, would not have failed to tell him everything
first opportunity, which would have been of no avail.

Think what you like, but if she's moved like you
I think I would like to know what he said to her. This man has a
tact, adorable delicacy. He has the peasant, the artist,
mostly military in his nature, but he also has something
the delicacy of the diplomat and the tenderness of the woman. The whole
makes a pretty rare set. What a friend you will have there! and her daughter!...

Believe me, the day you get accepted, get down on your knees to
thanks God. I know a lot of young girls, but come in
they and Angeline there is no comparison. It
worth, I know better than you. Her dazzling beauty is too dazzling
your poor eyes. You don't see the beauty of her soul, and yet
this is the one to love.

By the way, you will know that my reverend admirer has deigned to write in
my album. It ends like this:

  Calm and holy,
  Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart,
  Feeding its flames.

But there's no point in trying to open your eyes to my
glorious destinies. What a pity the pond is so far away, I
urge him to go there and meditate on his sermons, and not believe that
I would go and throw bread to the swan. No, my dear, the beautiful nature
leaves cold, but he has or wants to have the cult of antiquity, and
I would go and wash my dresses in the pond, like the beautiful Nausica.

Do I have to say that I am bored? that I miss you? Thinking about it,
I convinced myself that, despite your nerves as an old duchess, you
have a kind character. I hope the pilgrimage to the pond has gone
happily accomplished.

I am waiting for you; since you are happy, come singing.

I can't wait to kiss you.

Mina.



(Charles de Montbrun to Maurice Darville)


I haven't wasted my time since you left, and there isn't a
nobody in a position to give an account of you that I have not made speak.

You are pretty much what you should be; I saw it with
happiness, and as we can hardly demand more from humans
nature, I left my daughter perfectly free to accept you.
She didn't refuse, but she declares that she will never consent
to separate from me. Do your thoughts, my dear, and see if
you have some objection to _marry me._

You say that by giving you my daughter, I will gain a son and never
will not lose. I admit that I think a little differently, but I
would be selfish if I forgot his future for the happiness of the
keep it all to me.

You are in love with it, Maurice, which does not mean that you
can understand what she is to me, what she has been to me since
so sad day, when returning home, after my funeral
woman, I took in my arms my poor little orphan, who
his mother asked, weeping. You know I never discharged myself
on nobody of the care of his education. I thought no one there
would put so much concern, so much love. I wanted her
was the daughter of my soul as of my blood, and who could say
to what point does this double kinship attach us to each other?

You know it, usually we love our children more than
is not loved. But from Angeline to me there is a perfect return, and her
boundless attachment, his passionate tenderness would make me the most
happy with men, if I thought less often of what she
will suffer seeing me die.

I'm barely forty-two; in my life, I have not been sick.
Yet this thought torments me. She must have others
homework, other affections, I understand that. Maurice, take my
place in his heart, and God grant that my death is not to him
the inconsolable pain.

In what I was told about your account, one thing above all made me
pleasure: it is the unanimous testimony that we give to your frankness.

This reminds me that last year one of your old masters told me
said, speaking of you: "I don't think that boy would lie.
not to save his life. " In this connection, he recounted certain features of
your school time that show admirable respect for the
truth. "So," someone said, "why does he want to be a lawyer?" And he
claimed to have made a lawyer for his ward, because he had
always been _a little liar._

Let us slide on this mark of vocation. Your father was the man
most loyal, truest that I have known, and I'm glad he
passed you such a noble and beautiful quality. I hope that
you will always be, like him, a man of honor in
magnificent expanse of the word.

My dear Maurice, you know how much interest I have always had in you,
especially since you were an orphan. Of course, this interest is
double since I saw in you the future husband of my daughter. But
before going any further, I will wait to know if you accept our
conditions.

C. de Montbrun.



(Maurice Darville to Charles de Montbrun)


Sir,

I won't try to thank you. I keep reading your
letter to convince me of my happiness.

Miss your girl can she believe that i wanna part her
from you? No, a thousand times no, I don't want to make her suffer.
Besides, without any flattery, your company is delicious to me.

And why, please, wouldn't I really be a son to
you? I humbly admit, I sometimes found myself being
jealous of you; I thought she loved you too much. But
now I only ask to be associated with his worship; it will be necessary
that you end up confusing us a little in your heart.

You say, Sir, that my father was the most loyal man, the
more candid than you have ever known. I'm happy and proud of it.
If I have the good fortune to resemble him in this, it is indeed him that
I have to.

I vividly remember his contempt for any lie, and I
then tell you that his tenderly severe hand punished him hard
well. "He who defiles himself with a lie," he said to me then,
all the waters of the earth will never wash it away. "

This word struck me a lot, and made my youngster dream
mind, when I stopped staring at the St. Lawrence.

Please take the lead of my whole life, and please
make Mlle de Montbrun agree, with my most respects
respectful, the assurance of my boundless gratitude.

Sir, I wish I could tell you my happiness and my gratitude.

Maurice Darville.



(Charles de Montbrun to Maurice Darville)


Thank you for accepting me so willingly. Did I tell you that I don't
would not consent to Angeline's marriage before she was twenty
accomplished? but I have no objection to her giving you her
speak now, and since we're here, I'm going
ask for your most serious attention.

And first, Maurice, do you want to keep the generous
aspirations, the noble impulses, the chaste enthusiasm of your twenty
years? Do you want to love long and be loved always? "Keep
your heart, keep it with all kinds of care, because of it
life proceeds. " Should we tell you that you could not do anything
bigger or more difficult? "Show me, said a saint
bishop, show me a man who has kept himself pure, and I will
bow down to him. " A word as touching as it is noble!

Hey! my God, science, genius, glory and all that the
world admires, what is that compared to the splendor of a heart
pure? Besides, there are not two sources of happiness. To love or be
happy, it is absolutely the same; but it takes purity to
understand love.

O my son, do not neglect anything to keep the divine in its beauty
source of all that is lofty and tender in your soul.
But in this man cannot do much on his own. On your knees
Maurice, and ask for the ardor that fights and the strength that triumphs.
It is not in vain, you can be sure, that Scripture calls for prayer
_the whole of man_, and remember that in order not to agree
who is forbidden, you have to know how to refuse often and very often
what is allowed.

This is the big word and perhaps the least heard of education that
everyone owes themselves. God grant you hear it.

I beg you, also know how to be strong against human respect.
And you can believe me, it's not very difficult. Tell me,
if someone wanted to make you blush for your nationality, you
would laugh in contempt, wouldn't you?

True, I admire and honor national pride, but above I
put on the pride of faith. Know it well, faith is the greatest
moral forces. Bring it to life by doing all that
which it commands, and develop it by serious study. I have known
men who said they didn't need religion, that
honor was their god, but it is with honor, that one, of
less, many compromises, and if you had no other cult,
most certainly you wouldn't have my daughter.

My dear Maurice, it is also of supreme importance that you
accept, that you accomplish in all its extent the great
labor law, a law which mainly obliges young people, especially
strong.

And, by the way, don't you give the music too much time? Not that
I blame the culture for your beautiful talent, but hey, music does
must be the most pleasant of relaxation for you, and if
you want to taste the strong joys of study, you have to
deliver.

One more observation. I don't approve of your meddling
elections.

I was told that you have some nice speeches on the
conscience ... I want to be a good prince, but, I warn you
charitably, if you still happen to go, you, student of
twenty years, enlighten voters on their rights and duties,
I'll make Angeline and Mina laugh at you.

Besides, why espouse so warmly the interests of such and such
of another? Do you believe that the love of the fatherland is the passion of
many public men?

We have had our great parliamentary struggles. But it's
now the time of the little ones: the spirit of party has replaced
the national spirit.

No, patriotism, this noble flower, is hardly found in the
political, this soiled arena. I would be happy to be wrong;
but apart from a few very rare exceptions, I believe our men
of State much more concerned with themselves than with the country.

I saw them at work, and these miserable ambitions
collide, these vile interests, these narrow calculations, all this sad
assemblage of pettiness, falsehood, villainy, made me rise
in my heart an immense disgust, and in my bitter pain, I said: O
my country, let me love you, let me serve you by cultivating your
sacred ground!

I don't mean you have to be like me. And in
a few years, if public life invincibly attracts you,
enter it. But I saw a lot of pride, a lot of delicacies there
shipwreck, and in advance I say to you: That what is great remains
great, that what is pure remain pure.

This letter is serious, but so is the circumstance. I know
that a lover should contemplate marriage without fear; and yet, in you
in marriage, you contract great and difficult duties.

It will cost you, Maurice, not to give to your wife,
ardently loved, the mad tenderness which, by ignoring her dignity
and yours, would prepare you for all of them with infallible regrets.
It will cost you, be sure, to exercise your authority without
never put it at the service of your egoism and your whims.

Sacrifice is at the bottom of every duty well fulfilled; but to know
to renounce, is not that the true greatness? As Lacordaire said,
whose ardent words you like: "If you want to know the
a man's worth, put him to the test, and if he doesn't make you
the sound of sacrifice, whatever purple covers it,
turn your head and go on. "

My dear Maurice, I have finished. As you see, I spoke to you with
great freedom; but I believe myself doubly authorized, because you
are my best friend's son, and then you want to be the
mine.

My respects to Miss Darville. Since she has to come, why not
would you not go with him? You have my cordial invitation, and
the holidays are near.

See you soon. I am going to join my daughter who is waiting for me. Ah! if I
could by hugging you to my heart, give you the love that I
wish you had for it!

C. de Montbrun.



(Maurice Darville to Charles de Montbrun)


Sir,

I will never be able to acquit myself to you; but I promise you
to make her happy, I promise you will be happy to
me.

There is something in your manly word that reaches me
inside; you know how to take hold of the generous side of nature
human, and once again you'll be happy with me. That you have
well done not to rely on anyone to train your
girl! No other education would have made her who she is.

As for your invitation, I accept it with transport, and yet,
it seems to me that you will see me arrive without pleasure. But you have
generous soul, and I will always have for you the feelings of
more tender son.

No, I wouldn't have the sad courage to put a dirty hand
in his!

Your son of heart,

Maurice Darville.



(Maurice Darville to Angéline de Montbrun)


Miss,

I just thank you. Neither happiness nor love is expressed.
From the heart moved in its divine depths, it is tears that
spring up. God grant that one day you will know the ineffable
sweetness of those tears.

Miss, may you love me one day as I love you.

Yours forever,

Maurice Darville.



(Angéline de Montbrun to Mina Darville)


Dear Mina,

If you knew how I want you, instead of taking the boat
like everyone else, you would embark on the wing of the winds.
I will have so much pleasure to _demondanize you! _

My dad says we don't succeed in operations every day
like that. Men, you know, struggle
on everything and do not understand miracles.

But no matter, I'm full of confidence I'll change the queen of
fashion in flower of the meadows, and this great metamorphosis operated, you
will be very happy.

Every scepter weighs, I'm sure, and yet - see
human inconsistency - I am thinking of reclaiming my kingdom, and
take you as an ally.

Mina, my house, which you think is so peaceful, is plagued by
factions.

My old Monique forgets that her regency is over, and doesn't want to
let go of the reins of power, which gives it a
resemblance to many ministers.

If you come to my aid, I'll end up like lazy kings. I
could, it is true, protest in the name of order and law, but
I run the risk of overheating myself, and my father says not to scream,
unless the house is on fire.

I decided to wait for you, and when you forget too much that
it's up to me to command, I take on dignified airs.

Dear Mina, I find you very happy to come to us. He is
seems like it's quite a beautiful thing to see the master of the ocean
everyday.

Believe me, when you have observed him in his privacy, you will have
want to do like the Queen of Sheba, who proclaimed blessed
the servants of Solomon.

Mrs Swetchine wrote somewhere that the benevolence of some
hearts are sweeter than the affection of many others; like the
moon of Naples is brighter than many suns. That thought
often comes back to me when I see him among his servants.
Dear Mina, I would rather be her maid than the daughter of
the most prominent man in the country.

Your brother assures us that the moral resemblance between us is still
greater than the physical resemblance. It's a shame to know
flatter so well, and you should make her blush. Me, when
I try, he said to me: "But, since you have the closest
kinship of blood, why should you not have kinship of the soul?
Don't you know how much you look like him? ”

This question always makes me laugh, because since I got to
world, I hear that I look like him, and when I was little I
had them placed in front of a mirror, to study with him this
a resemblance which is no less sweet to him than to me. Delicious
study that we still repeat often.

That I can't wait to see you here where everything smiles, everything smells and everything
noise! it seems to me that there is so much pleasure in feeling alive and
how good the fresh air is! I want to reform you completely.
Alas! I am very afraid of always remaining in the country until
bottom of the soul. Here everything is so calm, so fresh, so pure, so beautiful!
What pleasure I will have to show you my woods, my garden and my
home, my moss nest where soon you will sing _Home, sweet
home._ You will see if my room is nice.

  "She is beautiful, she is kind,
  All blue. "

like the one that Mlle Henriette Chauveau sang. When you
will have seen her, you will judge if it is possible for me not to love her,

  "As the lark does
  And every nice bird,
  For the little grass nest
  Which was yesterday its cradle. "

I have taken all my care to prepare yours, and I hope that it
will please you. The sun laughs everywhere, my chilly. I'm going twenty
times a day, to make sure she's lovely, and also because
that you will get there soon. Judge my conduct when you there
will be. Waiting has its charm. I am constantly watching the
road by which you will come, but I see only the _sun which
powder and green grass._

Tell M. Maurice that I recommend that he take good care of you.
The beautiful family that we will make!

Dear sister, I love you and wait for you.

Angeline.



(Mina Darville to Angéline de Montbrun)


Dear sister,

Let me start as you end. Alas! I made
the imprudence of letting Maurice read your letter, and he lost
what little reason he had left.

My dear, you amuse me very much by recommending me to his care. Yes
you knew in what oblivion a lover holds all the things of
Earth!

I am reduced to taking care of him like a child. It seems
that in ecstasy we need nothing. However I persist to him
make take a broth from time to time. My cousin, worried,
wanted to have him treated, but he defended himself by singing _sotto
voce:

  Ah! take care not to cure me!
  I love my pain, I want to die of it.

The doctor consulted replied: “He drank hashish. Leave it
quiet." My cousin didn't ask for an explanation, but I see
although she is not sure she understood. Figurative language is
not his type.

I beg your wisdom not to be alarmed. Maurice has a nature
of artist, and he is in all the effervescence of youth. But
it will calm down. And when it would not calm down! The power of
smelling is not quite what scares a woman.

Besides, he has a lively faith and a real sense of honor.
You were made to love each other, and you will be happy together.
When he would cry in admiration at beautiful nature, or even
tenderness for you, what does it do? ...

Let’s say the positives. I have seen the happiness of reason up close and,
between us, it looks terribly like a life that is supported by
remedies.

I know that the word exaltation is quickly pronounced by some
people. Angeline, are you like me? There is a
awful little common sense, horribly stiff, excruciatingly narrow, that
I cannot meet without feeling the desire to do some big
madness. No, that I hate common sense, that would be a sad mistake.
Of all the men I know, your father is the most sane, and
I am _such_ charitable towards him. Real common sense
does not exclude any magnitude. Adjusting and shrinking are two good things
different. So what, please, is this so-called wisdom
who admits only the dull and lukewarm, and whose hand is dry and
cold would like to extinguish all that glitters, all that burns.

My beautiful flower of the fields, how happy you are to have seen little
world! If I had to do it again, I would choose not to see it
everything, to keep my candor and my ignorance. This is where I am
after two years of social life. Judge what Mrs D would say ... if
she wanted to talk.

I have had success. Please believe that I am saying this without too much
vanity. You know that Eugenie de Guérin has never been wanted.
There is food for thought for Mina Darville and her circle.
of admirers. Poor men! everywhere the same.

Dear friend, M. de Montbrun judges me badly. I only ask myself
_demondaniser._ I had resolved to arrive at your place with a simple
suitcase, as befits a traveling lofty soul.

But we rarely know what we want and never what we want: I have
ended up taking all my rags. Really, I don't understand a thing,
and in front of my full trunks and empty drawers, I find myself
dream.

My beautiful, you will have to help me to spend some of my
smuggled trunks. I am afraid of M. de Montbrun's smile. At
fundamentally, what harm is there in wanting to put on well as long as we have
taste.

If Mlle de Montbrun is indifferent to adornment, it is because
studying her resemblance, she realized that she could
perfectly do without. I cannot give myself this luxury.
There you go, and tell your father that I won't have been a week away
Valriant without discovering many faults in him.

I envision without fear a little chat with him, although he
sometimes harsh words. So last winter, in an hour
of effusion, I confessed to her that I was very unhappy - that I
didn't have time to love someone who immediately preferred one
other, - and instead of complaining, this austere confessor called me
_dangereuse coquette._

Anyway, my dear, I don't blame you for loving him, and even, he
I happen to say that it's a beautiful thing to be forced to
duty.

If you believe me, we will think it over before making Ms.
Monique. M. de Montbrun thinks you are the pearl of housewives, but,

  Someone shines in the second row that disappears in the first

Yet I hate usurpation. I am a legitimist. Tell Mr. to
Montbrun that we will advise together to give a king to the
France.

My dear, I am sure I will like my room. Only I
don't like laughing nature. I would need an alley lined with
fir trees, for my meditations. As for Maurice, I believe he has none
no need, and his thought seems to go away often _tout au
end of a garden, at the very edge of a pond.

Do not blush, my very beautiful. I kiss you like I kiss you
love.



(Mina Darville to Emma S ***)


It's leaving midnight, and I just closed my window, where I am
stayed a long time. I love the serene sweetness of beautiful nights, and I
you pity, my dear friend, for wanting to shut yourself up.

Sorry, you don't like me bringing this up. It seems to me
yet I don't speak badly of it, but ...

Have you ever traveled down the Saguenay? ...

Frankly, religious life strikes me as this amazing
river, which flows peacefully and deep, between two walls of
granite. It's big, but sad. My dear, inflexible uniformity,
austere detachment is not for me.

I like it perfectly in Valriant, a charming place, which would not have
nothing grand without the river which gives it the air of the ocean.
Should we tell you that Maurice is happy? The secret is no longer
one now. It's hard, whatever we do, to find
much to complain about this marriage; and really it's a beautiful thing
that this love which grows thus in the great sun, in all peace and
security. Then, around them, everything is so beautiful.

Without doubt, nothing is more interior than happiness. But all of
even when God created Adam and Eve he did not put them in a field
sorry. Maurice would adapt perfectly to a dungeon, but
skeptical, you no longer believe in anything. You say it is
love like ghosts: that we talk about it on the faith of others.
What are you in Valriant. You would have to recognize that love
exists - that there are realities more beautiful than the dream.

Angeline looks more like her father than ever. She has this charm
penetrating, that indefinable je ne sais quoi that I only saw
him and that I call _montbrunage._ But what I like especially in
her is her deep sensitivity, her admirable power
to love.

You know how I tend to estimate people by what they
worth by that, and why not? My weight is my love said
Saint Augustin.

If I know anything about it, Angeline's tenderness for her father
is boundless, but she loves him without a phrase and only kisses him
in the corners.

We all lead the healthiest, most enjoyable life in the world.
world. There is a salubrious scent here that will penetrate me eventually.

Really, I don't know how I can take back the chain of my
worldliness. Do you remember our preparations for the ball, so
that getting well was the big deal, and that I would have
so wished to have a fairy for godmother, like Cinderella?
Seriously it would have cost us less time and money
to rescue a few families of decent people from poverty. I you
assure that I have come back from the big hits and the little ones
feelings. But love is a beautiful thing ... to love is to go out
of oneself. I confess to you that I cannot stand myself any longer.
Good evening.

Mina.

PS - It's Angeline and Maurice's fault. We can't see them
together without going too far.



(The same to the same)


Do you remember how carefully you watched over the foot?
of snowballs that adorned the courtyard of the Ursulines. I do not know
why this memory came back to me earlier while I was
was walking in the garden. I would like to see you there. Usually
I don't like gardens: I find there I don't know what brings me to
sing:

  I love the daisy
  Which blooms in the fields.

But this one has an air of paradise. Really, I would like to spend my
life. There are charming shrines there, cradles full of greenery
of shade, of freshness, of perfumes.

Never have I seen so many flowers, flowers in the sun, flowers in
shade, flowers everywhere. And all the charm of the spontaneous, the natural.
You know my horror for the aligned, the stilted, the symmetrical.

Nothing of that here, but the most graceful jumble of lawns,
flowerbeds and groves. A friendly stream chirps there and
playful, and here and there, discreet paths go under
leafy. My beautiful green and dark paths! The grass is there
soft; thick shade; the birds sing there, the life rushes there from
all over.

It is a delicious walk, which ends in a pond, the most
fresh, the prettiest in the world.

We often go to start the evening there, but, alas! the
unwelcome people creep in everywhere. Sometimes it comes to us. Yesterday I
am very humiliated - we had to put up with a Quebecois a lot
richer than lovable, who has ventured here. The garden him
snatched several big compliments, and arrived at the pond: "As
it's pretty, he said. The beautiful place to take a nap after her
having dinner?"

Maurice gave him a look of contempt, and walked away, humming his
Hungarian march._ I explained to Angeline that her future lord and
master is _genus irritabile_, that the Hungarian march is a
sure sign of anger; and that by hearing these bellicose notes,
she will always have to show herself. It amused us, but she said that
to get angry, to get impatient, is to spend something unnecessarily
of his strength.

The more I see her, the more I find her well brought up; she calls me her
sister, which delighted Maurice. Poor Maurice. Her voice is over
velvety as ever. Gentle talking doesn't hurt anything.

Angeline's conversation does not resemble that of a woman from
world, but it is singularly pleasant. Maurice says she has
the ray, the perfume, the dew. The poor boy is in love to do
envy and pity.

Angeline asks me a thousand charming questions about her character, about
his tastes, his habits. His reveries interest him without
that she knows too well why. You wouldn't believe like this
crazy fear he has of dying Jesuit entertains her as well as
his horror for the young ladies who sing: "Ask the breeze
plaintive ”, or other languid nonsense.

M. de Montbrun treats me in the most amiable manner, with this air
a little protective that suits him so well. He is accused of not filling
all his merit._ But as I am grateful to him for never having been
minister! It is good to see this descendant of an illustrious race
cultivate the land with his hands. God grant that this example is not
not lost.

Tonight we were talking together about the future of Canada; It was one
little sad and worried. For me, I did like everyone else: I
fell on the government, which does so little to stop
emigration, to promote colonization. But this beautiful zeal
left cold; and, casting a somewhat dismissive glance at my
toilet, he asked me if I had ever thought of refusing me
thing to help the poor settlers.

My dear Emma, ​​I could not say: "I did it", but I
say: "I will". He smiles, and that smile, the finest I have
seen, shocked me. I wanted to cry. Does he believe me incapable of
high feeling? I'll prove to her that I'm not that frivolous
let him think so. You know, sometimes a simple word is enough to
wake up sleeping feelings. Ah! if wanting was power! ...

Sometimes leaning on my window, I had dreams like the Father
L ... would if he had time. I gave everyone the momentum
patriotic. I put out the chandeliers of the balls I suppressed
the extravagance of banquets, all that is spent unnecessarily
persuaded everyone to give it for colonization.

Then I saw the deserts become more fertile, the hills grow
to clothe with joy, the germs to rejoice in the bowels of
the earth_, and beside the lamp of the lowly church, the lamp of
colon was shining. Ah! if everyone did what they can! Such a big
would many Canadians take the road to exile? But I like
hope. We were born of France and of the Church. Trust
and good evening, dear friend.

Mina.



(The same to the same)


Really, my patriotic dreams are suspect to you, and it is
not without malice that you advise me to seek the source of this
beautiful zeal. My dear, I am not curious. Look for the
sources, going back to principles is the business of explorers and
philosophers. Do you mean to confuse me with these people?
Besides, we should never admit the most, when the least
suffices for an explanation. Here patriotism suffices.

Do you remember our conversations from last fall, when
were you starting to be a little wise? ... what progress do you have
facts! I would like to resume these talks.

Angeline has all my friendship, all my trust, but she is mine
too superior in some respects. No dust ever
touched this radiant flower, and consequently I always observe myself
a little; with you, I am more free.

Despite your religious aspirations, I cannot forget that we
we have been companions of chimeras, of readings, of frivolities.
Sometimes I envy you your disenchantment so prompt, so complete.
But these desires quickly vanish. I persist in hoping that a
one day or another happiness will pass on this poor land that God has
made so beautiful.

From my window I have a wonderful view of the river. Really, it is
the ocean. I never tire of looking at him. I love the sea. This
music of the waves throws a velvet of melancholy on sadness
of my thoughts, because, I confess, I have sorrows, and
I would gladly say, as I no longer remember which queen: "Fi de la
life". Yet I have no positive cause for grief, but you
know, we stop loving each other if no one loves us.

Well! I see the day coming when I will be horrified.

You are not unaware of how I desired the realization of the dream of
Maurice. No doubt I knew I would drop to second place. But
is this the second rank that I hold? Is there a possible comparison
between his worship for her and his affection for me?

It is true, that on the other hand Angeline loves me more than before she
is the most amiable, the most tender of sisters; but of course
I come well after her fiancé and her father.

As for this _the last but not the least_, what is this
kind interest he has in me? I admit it, in this manly heart the
least feeling has strength. But again, what is
that? If you only knew how much he loves his daughter!

For me, I am not needed by anyone. My dear Emma, ​​I feel
what a miser would feel when he saw others laden with gold, and
would only have a few coins.

Mina.



(The same to the same)


You say, dear friend, that the only sad thing would be to be
loved above all else. _Triste_, is that the right word? Let's say
formidable, if you will, but rest assured, I am
the shelter on this side. No doubt it is sweeter, more divine to
to give than to receive. But absolute disinterestedness, where the
do we find?

I admit that your quote from Fenelon did not please me. This king
of China stuck in my heart. What! this is where you want
arrive? There will come a time when you don't mind
I give you a thought, a memory!

I complained to M. de Montbrun, who answered me, not without
malice perhaps, that you had it for a long time before being
to _pure love_ and _mystical death._

I see he finds it charming that worldly rivalries have
not cooled our childhood friendship. He says we have some good.
On paper it doesn't look very flattering, but this heck
man has the secret of returning the slightest compliment extremely
acceptable.

I confess that I do not get used to the charm of his conversation.
Yet his mind often falls asleep, his mind needs the big
air, and he never talks so well except across fields, but
anything. Even in a well-closed living room, he always keeps I don't
know what that rests, refreshes, and makes us listen to it as we
walks on the moss, as one listens to the stream.

It lacks only a little of that disturbing charm that made us
extravagant in front of the portrait of Chateaubriand. I say _fait._
Basically, this beautiful head combed by the wind, pleases me even more
that cannot be said. But decidedly it's too René. Admire my
wisdom. I would like to learn to understand, to practice life, I
would like to forget the dark beauty and his immortal sorrows.
However, this boredom is very amiable. Agree.

M. de Montbrun assures you that you will find your gaiety behind
grates. Although he has seen you little, he has not forgotten you;
he likes you, and how much I am happy by making you
justice i didn't let him ignore you find him man
the most attractive you have seen.

Discretion must have limits; besides with him that's all
completely without disadvantages: he will not believe you are in love with him
eve to be.

We sometimes speak of your vocation. He approves of you
take the shortest path to go to heaven. But i stay
weak against the thought of this half-separation.

I fear that religious austerity will harm our privacy. There is
has a lot of feminine things to say; friendship without
trust, it is a flower without perfume. Then sometimes it takes so
little to change friendship into indifference. It seems to me,
that at times the heart is a lot like these northern seas
that a stone thrown, that the slightest shock will freeze on all sides,
once the summer is over. Take care.

It is now decided that Maurice will go to France for his studies.
How will he be able to tear himself away from here? I don't know, neither does he
more.

But we should always end up leaving, and M. de Montbrun
doesn't want Angeline to get married before she is twenty. For me I
will probably spend most of my absence here.
brother. He wants it, and my beautiful little sister presses me very hard.

Poor children! the thought of leaving darkens them a lot, which
reasure me. Strangely enough, happiness is scary. It seemed to me
always something was going to happen. It is very singular,
but Angeline often inspires me with a pity that cannot be expressed. I have it
find too beautiful, too charming, too happy, too loved.

You understand that here we are far from _the illusion of
friendships of the earth, which go away with years and interests.
Really, no matter how I look, I don't see the _black grain_,
as sailors say. Would happiness be of this world? It is
true that his father does not try to spare him the little ones at all
annoyances of every day. He subjects him very well to his duty.
But what is this? Just looking at her, we see that she does not
not know the dull, or, as we say, the gray of life.

Mina.



(Mina Darville to Emma S ***)


I'm in the best mood in the world, and I want to tell you
Why. First of all, know that Mrs. H ... is in Valriant. Yes my
dear, she can't stand the stay in the fashionable countryside
(sic). He needs calm, rest, etc., etc. It is perfectly
touching, but I am inclined to believe that this inconsolable widow
would very willingly do "her main business of the gentle care of loving
and to please. ”

Still, she did like the one who went to the mountain
because the mountain did not come to him. Besides, always
brilliant; only Angeline's neighborhood is not him
advantageous. She looks a bit like a dahlia next to a rose that
opens.

But she was maneuvering her best. It was necessary to see with which
enthusiasm she left Angeline! With what modest grace she
reproached M. de Montbrun for resembling so much the most charming
Canadian women. It was a zesty study. But under the graces
studied, I thought I saw a sincere passion. What is certain is
that she hates me cordially. I am his _bête noire._ It's true
that ostensibly, they make me the most beautiful velvet paw
possible, but I often felt the claws.

What perfidious compliments! how dangerous this woman would be if
she had measure! and what poor person she would like
to make me under the beautiful pretext of raising my successes.

Yes, my dear, I am a great criminal, and I have already done
shed many tears. We know some whose hearts are in ashes.
I am the cause that young talents neglect study and wither away
sadly. So M. de Montbrun told me: "Mademoiselle, I am starting
to believe that I am doing my country a great service by keeping you
Valid at my own risk. "

It made us laugh. Madame H ... who knows so many things, does not know
that by proving too much we prove nothing. But I am well avenged.
Madame will go _ dragging the wing and pulling the foot.

I don't speak figuratively. She sprained herself slipping
of a rock where she had ventured in spite of my wise remonstrances.
Fortunately, she had more fear than harm.

But if you had seen his convoy! M. de Montbrun and Maurice
carried the stretcher, Angeline carried Madame's parasol. For
I was like Malbrouck's other officer: the one who
wore nothing.

You have to believe that I don't have a very good heart, because I had a
mad desire to laugh. Basically, I don't blame myself much.
As M. de Montbrun's coachman said: "The fat lady did not have
business to get on the notch, it was beautiful to walk
in the king's path. "

We went in a body to visit him. M. de Montbrun had
didn't look more moved than it should be, and I had a face that didn't
was worth nothing. Since then we have lost MW .. It is a foreigner who
enjoys fishing very much, and firmly believes that all that is
tall, noble, distinguished, comes in righteousness from England.

Besides, very well. For a fortnight he honored us
of his attendance.

Angeline maintains that she saw him laugh. It is certain that he
sometimes tried to banter, and if you knew how his sentence is
leaded? "But," said M. de Montbrun, "God grants me the favor
not to always hear it. " What did not prevent him from giving
the signal for celebration as soon as his lordship had
definitely turned on his heels. Yet its solemnity amused us
sometimes.

Good evening my dear.

Mina.



(Mina Darville to Emma S ***)


Madame H ... is better, or rather she just has to stand
quiet, and rest, isn't that what she wanted? For the
moment I would adapt perfectly to it. You know I don't write
hardly until late, and tonight I fall asleep as if I had
listened to a speech about the tariff or chatted with MW ..

It's hard to stay in front of my inkwell when my bed is there if
near. What are you here? we would chat while looking at the stars.
They are very beautiful: I just looked at them to refresh myself.

When I was a child, the firmament interested me a lot, and I
absolutely wanted there to be holes in the sky floor,
through which we saw the light of God.

Despite everything, I still have something of this attraction
heavenly, because at the end of the battles I always think of watching
stars. I don't mean these beautiful evenings are the most
effective _sursum corda._ Yet I remember that one night, like
I was coming back from a ball, the Ursuline bell rang for the rising of the
religious. Never, no, never a funeral death knell has penetrated so before
in my heart. Oh, that this bell preached well in silence
deep of the night!

When I got to my room, I threw my furs there, and stayed
for a long time in front of my mirror, as I was - in great finery - and I
assure you that my thoughts were not of vanity. Then when
I managed to fall asleep, I had a dream that I never have
spoken, but which left an indelible impression on me.

It seemed to me that I was in the little inner courtyard of
Ursulines, when suddenly a cell window opened, and
I saw a nun appear. I don't know how, but from the first
glance, under the white headband and the black veil, I recognized
this brilliant socialite of two hundred years ago, Madeleine de
Repentigny.

She looked at me with tender pity, and with her hand indicated
the small door of the monastery; but I couldn't move forward: a force
terrible held me to the earth. She noticed it, and pressed her
luminous forehead on his clasped hands, then I felt
detached, but what pain I felt in my whole being!

I woke up, more moved, more impressed than I could possibly
to say. Usually, I take this memory away, but that day I
felt in all its force the truth of these words of Imitation:
The joy of the evening makes waking up the next day bitter.

Good evening, my dear friend.

Mina.



(Mina Darville to Emma S ***)


You take my dream very seriously. It is sufficiently explained by
my emotions of the night, by the thoughts that occupied me when I
fell asleep.

However, I still have a kind of tenderness for this
kind Madeleine de Repentigny. It is true that I had always had
a weakness for this beautiful socialite. Her memory came back to me
often when I went to the Chapel of Saints.

I loved this little lamp that burns there day and night, as a testimony
perpetual of his gratitude; I even asked that I be
let care. But let's move on, and God will always leave me
the healthy pleasures of life.

Here I wake up to the rays of the sun that gild my window, to the
songs of the birds that inhabit the garden, but I never get up
good time that now and then.

However, I like the morning all fresh, all damp with dew; But
_l'autre_, as X. de Maistre said, adapts so well to a
good bed.

I'm very worried that I'll never be quite like the woman
strong, nor like Angéline, whom Maurice calls the Morning Star. he
seems he is always the first standing. But the beautiful merit,
when we are in love, to go make bouquets in the most beautiful
garden of the world and wait!

Poor Maurice! I'm pretty sure all the birds in the sky
sing around him without preventing him from distinguishing the little one
noise that a certain window makes when opening. But I'm in
expense of compromising the family's ear.

Can you imagine that I, who love birds so much, do not recognize them
not always by voice; that shocks Angeline. "What," she said, "a
musician, a Darville, take the song of a linnet for the
song of a warbler! " It is not she who will do the same
fault.

"And yet," she said, "in my family we never knew what to eat
marks."

That doesn't stop her from loving music and feeling it the way
Angels. She says that, according to Saint Francis of Assisi, music
will be one of the pleasures of heaven, and I like the thought very much.
Deep down I think we all have some fear of ourselves
bored for eternity.

Today is Saint-Louis. We haven't forgotten it. Poor
France! Angéline said, like Eugénie de Guérin, that she would
willingly the rope to hang the Republic and the republicans.
For my part I would not see much harm, but I ask for mercy
for Victor Hugo, who sang the _lis out of the tomb._ Angéline
is more royalist than me; she finds me lukewarm, and Maurice does not dare
to say that he is a Bonapartist.

Let us leave past and future governments. Dear friend, the sea is
a great seductress. Here, how beautiful and terrible! what
is sweet too. So, as she gently rocks the barges of
poor fishermen. It's a charm. And this magical phosphorescence
waves...

M. de Montbrun has a barge called _La Mouette_, and so pretty,
so gracious!

Angéline adores walks on the water.

You can imagine if Maurice suffered from not playing an active part in it.
He immediately went to fishing school and now he
maneuver _La Mouette_, as if he had never done anything else
of his life. Angeline, who takes care of putting the sail to the wind, says that
Maurice makes admiral's knots.

It was a great triumph for him the first time he took the
driving on board. When there is no breeze, he oars, which makes him
allows you to admire its strength. It does not yet equal that of
M. de Montbrun, but she is not at all to be despised. And when
both start to row, _The Seagull_ seems to fly on the
waves.

You think if Maurice sings willingly and on this sea
radiant, under this vast sky, his incomparable voice has a charm
very deep. Sparks of fire run in the foam of the wake,
and along the shore. For Angéline and Maurice, these walks
must have a dreamlike beauty. These can say like Albert
de la Ferronnays: "It would be blasphemy to think that God did not
was not created for happiness. "

Good evening dear friend.

Mina.



(Mina Darville to Emma S ***)


We have finished our hay, and I would gladly say that I am not there
nui, but Angeline finds that I make myself believe it, that I
ring my rakes loudly.

I wish you had seen Angeline in her
tedder. Without comparison, I was not bad either, and without
lie we were well received.

M. de Montbrun declared himself charmed. He compared us to the gleaners of
the Bible, to all the beautiful workers of antiquity. Even he
told me a few Latin verses, where I think it was about
rural deities. I am very satisfied. Mina Darville melee
with the deities! All that was lacking in the humiliations of
Olympus!

By the way, you will know that the master of this house does not go to his fields
without carefully gloving. Deep down, I don't see that there is any
what to throw stone at him, but all the same, I told him:
“Really, you amaze me; I had always believed that man - this
to be superior - cared only for the beauty of his soul. Would it be
by pride of race that you take so great care of your beautiful
hands of an aristocrat? "

I maintain him that he will end up passing for a idle, for _a
bourgeois._ My dear friend, - you will believe me if you can - this
man deserves to be seen up close.

Its serene tranquility attracts, makes one dream like the calm of waters
deep. It's a really strong nature, and I can't
watch carefully without putting the magnificent on his lips:
_I am master of myself_, from Augustus to Cinna.

This is what we gain by reading the classics! and believe me it would be
a beautiful thing to disturb this beautiful calm, to see the humiliation of
this superb. But madness to think about it. He only sees his daughter.

Really, I don't believe he has a thought that she doesn't come in for
Something. How kind he is to her! what did she do,
tell me, to deserve to be so perfectly loved!

The other evening, Maurice asked him to read _La fille du Tintoret_,
what he did, and you know as an expression of a feeling
mighty intoxicates us poor women. This accent so true,
so passionate pursues me everywhere. Dead oh my friend, as he says
that!

Should we be surprised if Angeline could not stand it? if the next moment
she was crying in his arms, oblivious of our presence and everything?
Ah! he too can say that in his _daughter God crowned him._

And I understand that God asks us all our heart, because I
terribly hate fractions.

Mina.



(Mina Darville to Emma S ***)


My dear Emma, ​​I am going to tell you a little thing that
left a fond memory.

In recent days, a young farmer from the area came to ask
a bouquet to Mlle de Montbrun for her fiancée. He had to get married
the next day. So we did our best, and the bouquet came
found fit for a queen.

The brave boy looked at him with rapture and hardly dared
touch it. Her love is famous around here, and like women
still interested a little in these things, we made him talk.

Ah, my dear, this one is not a jaded, nor a dreamer no
more, I must say, - for he is the hardest worker of
the place, - also under his naive word one feels the full, as under
the word of many others we feel the hollow, the void.

Angeline listened to him with moved and sincere curiosity; me I
did talk, and finally, we remained charmed.

Angeline decided that it was necessary to give a little surprise to these
in love and on the wedding day, we brought them a pretty little
eve.

The bride and groom had not yet arrived. I confess that their
tidy and closed house interested me.

We looked at everything: the ripening crops, the trees
fruit trees still small, the garden which will flower. Very close to the
door, two old poplars shade a charming spring.

Angeline says that the beautiful springs and the old trees bear
happiness at homes. This one has, to say well, only the four sides,
but one felt there what replaces everything. The tablecloth was soon put,
and New Years Eve out of the basket.

It was a pleasure to see Angéline take care of this housework,
in this poor house. She looked everywhere, with these beautiful
wide open eyes you know, and pointed out to me the wood
and bark carefully arranged in the hearth, waiting for a
spark to catch fire. I confess that this little detail made me
dream.

We came back philosophizing. Angeline wanted to know
why in the world one attaches contempt to a poor, simple life
and frugal. If you heard him talk about the ancient Romans!

As for me, I love these big names on pink lips; I see
always with respect the poor house of a settler and yet ...
So would I have me, of that old devotion that you call the
cult of the golden calf? I don't believe so, but some sides of the glitz
always dazzle me a little.

To completely escape the spirit of the world, it takes a soul
very strong and very noble. But strong souls are rare, and
noble souls too.

I kiss you.

Mina.



(Mina Darville to Emma S ***)


You are right. The treats of comfortable living help
much to form weak and dull characters, - types
bourgeois as M. de Montbrun would say. Poor bourgeois I would have some
a lot to say about the agreed, the flabby, the cottony.

M. de Montbrun says that there is a certain material well-being which
always gives him the desire to live on bread and water. Believe me,
that wouldn't be a reason for refusing to dine with him.

My dear, I'm visibly turning to austerity, and I'll end up
say like Solomon: "My God, give me only what is
necessary to live. "

In the meantime, it is raining heavily. I have never seen so much water fall.
Who said that the countryside, in the rain, looks like a beautiful
crying woman?

I do not see this at all, but if it is true, I advise
beautiful women not to cry. The rain bores me perfectly.

But a good fire consoles many things, and I don't think
everything to drown me. Nothing prepares me to talk like a beautiful
soaring, in a vast fireplace.

We fairly share my taste and we don't seem bored at all.
All the same we find that I really like the _grandes
flames._

We read often, and I choose the readings. You
know, I have a feature of resemblance with the mother of Mme de Grignan:
I love the big blows of the sword. But I think we're starting to
be a little tired of it.

  "If Donkey Skin were told to me,
  "I would take extreme pleasure in it."

whispered to me the other night, the most amiable of hosts.

I haven't been told twice. All the favorite tales of
our childhood spent there, and this crazy evening was the most
nice to the world.

M. de Montbrun claims that the success of Cinderella must have made me
to dream early; but Maurice is there to say that I have
always preferred tales, where there are ogres and little ones
lights.

This evening, Maurice read us the _Vol de l'Âme._ I remember you
to have heard, that you could not see one fine morning
of autumn, without thinking a little about this amiable Claire, this noble
Fabien.

Angéline can hardly explain these lovers. I'll have her
was watching with Maurice, and I was thinking of many things that
do not usually occupy me.

Despite everything, at times we feel that the sacrifice is better
that all joys. And besides, around us so many things
preach to us.

There are already dry leaves in this delicious garden of
Valriant. Tell me, do you picture a dead leaf in the
Heaven on Earth? ...

Good evening dear friend.

Mina.



(Emma S *** to Mina Darville)


My dear Mina,

No, no doubt there would never have been any dry leaves in the
Heaven on Earth. It would have sworn too much with immortal beauty, with
eternal youth. I confess that I would have accommodated myself very well
of those things.

I very much regret this beautiful paradise, this garden of pleasure where we
would never have seen mud; the mud comes in righteousness from sin. But
always, dear friend, the true sky remains to us.

Since it is up to us to go, why would you be sad? I
beg you, take away melancholy. This fond lives on what he
is more exquisite in the soul, and always leaves us a little
weak. I hear it poetic and seductive melancholy, no
of grave and Christian sadness. This one, I wish it for you,
because it always turns into joy, and besides, who can
always defend, from this divine sadness?

My dear Mina, this is my last fall in the world, and you do
could believe what a touching charm this thought spreads over everything
that I see. It's like I'm going to die.

Nature has never seemed so beautiful to me. I walk a lot alone,
with my thoughts, and I know not what sweet serenity, which does not
quit more. You can already feel the fall. But in our present state,
I believe it is better to walk on dry leaves than on
fresh grass.

While waiting for it to snow, I have a place here that makes my
delicacies. It is quite simply an indentation by the sea;
but huge rocks hang over it and always seem ready to
collapse, which inspires me with mad fear mixed with charm.

Despite the distance and the rough, stony path, I go
often. I love this perfect and wild solitude, where you can't hear
than the cry of gulls and the sound of the sea. There, not a shrub,
not a plant: only a few mosses between the slits of the
rocks, and here and there a few feathers.

It seems to me that this place would please you perfectly, especially
when the sun lets down on the waves, these beautiful trails of
fire that you love so much.

Tonight, the most beautiful clouds I have seen were reflected in
the water. It gave the sea a shimmering, marvelous background, and I
thought of many things.

I haven't forgotten how life appears while ... but let's move on.

Dear Mina, whatever it seems to us at times, this is the
cold, it's arid, it's dullness that makes the bottom of the sea, and
it is not love that is the basis of life.

This is very wise, but I guess the wisdom of the woman
is, like that of man, _always short in some place.

This great clarity of disillusionment don't reach you, don't go
to Valriant.

I often think of your kind _promises_ (pass me an expression
Breton), and I hope you will see _l'humiliation du superbe._

Without flattery, I am surprised that he lasts so long. Dear Mina,
you have given me many worries. You want to get married, and, under
from the outside a little frivolous, you hide everything you need to
never love a man who has character, dignity,
delicacy, and - I beg your pardon from these gentlemen - all this
seems very rare to me.

But he has Christian virility and charm, which doesn't spoil anything.

Courage, my dear. We find you a little frivolous, but we
will come forward, and this time I hope you will put
your coquetries aside, to say quite frankly like Beauty
in the Sleeping Wood: "Certainly, my prince, you have done well
expect."

Emma.



(Mina Darville to Emma S ***)


I promise to tell you exactly like Sleeping Beauty.

In the meantime, I am as pleasant as possible with him; but the
pretty little Madame S ... was not wrong when she said
that he wears enchanted armor. At least all the traits we
come back as in the legends, and he doesn't seem to care
wear more badly.

All modesty aside, I don't understand a thing, especially since I
am sure to please him. Now I hardly meet her
gaze without seeing a flame, a flash of lightning, and, in my opinion,
that would mean something.

This fiery and restrained nature is very pleasant to study. But
what is holding him back? It can't be the age difference there is
good mirrors here.

I guess we blame ourselves for this involuntary weakness. Then we
can't find me a first-rate soul, maybe also it is believed,
that I could not put up with a serious, withdrawn life.

The point is, I care about the pleasures of the world like fashions
from last year. For nothing, I would suggest that she go live on
the coasts of Labrador. We would walk on the white moss
through the mists, like the heroes of Ossian.

Ah! my dear, I have many daily temptations, and I
surprise them making ejaculatory prayers, of the kind of
Maurice, when he would stop at any moment to say "That she
is beautiful! Lord, I want her to love me! ”

Poor Maurice! Here is his departure very close. I'm going to go back
with him in Quebec, where I intend to meet you, and not
leave more than your shadow until you enter the convent.

When I think that afterwards you will never come to us again,
in my room where we were so well. It seems to me that the novitiate
will appear gloomy to you, despite this beautiful painting of Saint Louis of
Gonzaga that I see from here. That heavenly face leaning over the
crucifix, left me one of those impressions that nothing erases.

Sometimes I think that those are happy who are truly God's;
they fear neither growing old nor dying.

All around us, the leaves are visibly yellow. You know
that I cannot see a withered leaf without thinking of male things
sad. I admit, these poor leaves have already made people talk
of them. But no matter what, I'll still love the old leaf
d'Arnauld who says so well: "I go where everything goes."

These are the first verses that I knew, and this is my dying father
who taught them to me. That's why probably they keep for me
a charm so touching, so funereal.

M. de Montbrun often speaks to me of my father; better than anyone he
let me know.

Did I tell you I'll be spending the winter in Valriant? You understand
that I'm not making a big sacrifice. Maurice gone, I would find
the big house: it's all my family, but here I have one
other.

It is a pleasure to see the engagement ring shine on the beautiful
hand of Angeline. This ring is my mother's. Before dying,
she herself gave it to Maurice, for the one who would be the companion of
his life. I sometimes wonder if she could ever have wished for it
so virginal, so charming.

You say I gave you a lot of trouble. My dear, I have some
also had a lot. I believe, like Madame de Staël, that a woman,
who dies without having loved, has missed life, and, on the other hand, I
felt I would never want a worthy man to be.

It is true that several amiable "not much" wanted me
persuade that it was up to me to make them perfect, or little
far from it. But I find it sad for a woman to educate
from her husband.

I prefer to marry an accomplished man. Yet, I admit,
someone, who was not, interested me a lot. I
knew his stormy youth, but his melancholy touched me. I
I thought of Saint Augustine far from God, of his glorious sorrows.
"Dear beautiful tormented soul!" I often said to myself. Later i
sus ... let's move on.

It seems that Miss V ... are still exhausted to say that I am
fundamentally sassy, ​​that I will treat my husband like a
_nègre._ The poor man! Do you not pity him?

For me, I really want to go and watch someone walking around
on the gallery. This not so regular, so firm, always makes me a
little nervous. My dear, _It can't be helped_, I'm afraid.

And must we say that this one would be a master? But it doesn't matter.
I prefer to obey him than to command others. Here it is - and I him
am grateful for wanting to tear myself away from these puerilities, these
trivialities, which men usually nobly pretend to
abandon us, while reserving so much of it.

See you soon

Mina.



(Maurice Darville to Angéline de Montbrun)


My friend,

I am still all suffering, all broken, from this terrible effort
that it took me to tear myself away from you. Once in the
car I burst into tears, and even now, at times, I
am weak as a child.

Yet I try to live without seeing you. But you forget one
moment, I am no more master than preventing my heart from
beat or my blood to circulate. Ah! if i could tell you the excess
of my misery. Everything hurts me, everything is unbearable to me. Angeline,
here is the moment of departure. I'm going to put the ocean between us.
May God have mercy on me! and may he keep you and bless you, my
dear and sacred bride, my beloved immortal.

Kiss your father for me. O my life! oh my beauty! I would give
my blood to know that you cry for me.

Maurice.



(Angéline de Montbrun to Maurice Darville)


After your departure, I was obliged to keep myself shut up, and I
lets guess why. If you knew how sad it is not to
no longer see you anywhere, never to hear your beautiful again
voice. I give up telling you, and dare not think of this immense
distance that separates us.

As you must suffer to go away among the indifferent,
strangers. I keep thinking about it and find you much more to
complain that me. My father knows how to give me courage. He speaks to me if
good of you ... with an esteem that makes me so proud. My noble
Maurice, you deserve to be his son; it's with you that I want
spend my life. Tell me, do you sometimes think of the return?

I am already waiting for you, and often I find myself willing
everything for your arrival. That day I'll need a bright sky,
an azure, a sun, a light, as you like them. I want
Valriant appears to you in beauty.

In the meantime, you have to be bored. Often I take this guitar
that echoed so wonderfully under your fingers. I try to him
repeat a few of your agreements. I have them so well in
the ear; but the magic of memory is not enough.

The frosts have already ravaged the garden. This beautiful greenery that
you watched so much, admired so much, from one day to the next, I
see withering. I am going to see her disappear and it saddens me.
This is the first time that autumn has made this impression on me.

It seems, Maurice, that you left me your melancholy. I have
pity, sympathy for everything that fades, for everything
what fades.

You call me _your beloved immortal; _ Maurice, the beautiful
word! that it was to my soul and that it is delicious to me.

And yet, they say that there is no eternal love, only the dream
endless love, always pursued, always been in vain
on the ground. When what I read about it comes back to me, and makes me
think, I reread your letter and I taste deep in my heart this
heavenly word: _My beloved immortal ._

Did I tell you to put in your room the image of the Virgin that
I gave you? Don't miss it. Very often I ask him to
have you in his very gentle and very secure care. Also pray for
I, and I beseech you, love me in God and for God so that
your heart never gets cold.

Yours for life and beyond.

Angeline.



(Maurice Darville to Angéline de Montbrun)


My love, my beauty, my heart, my life,

If I understand, you want me to love you out of charity. I you
admit that I would be greatly prevented from doing so. But I am very grateful
to God, who made you as you are. Does this not
not enough, great dreamer? ...

My dear conscience, do not try to confuse me. I know everything
that we have said about the vanity of human tenderness, only that
don't look at us.

Angeline, I don't want you to think about these things, and as soon as
I will have the right, I _you will defend it ._ It will be the first
use of my authority.

In the meantime, I obey you _con amore_, and I have placed the image of the
Virgin in my room. It was my first treatment. Should we add
that below I put your portrait (the one stolen from Mina).

I burn a lamp there, the prettiest in the world. First, it is
ceaseless prayer, and then this soft light shines on
your portrait, I don't know what celestial that sustains me, that
soothes me.

My dear and beloved, I have a lot to do not to read your
letter continually. You ask if I am thinking of the return. If I there
thought! But that's what keeps me from dying of boredom.

Tell me, is it true that you agreed to share my
life? Often, “I close my eyes the better to see the hope.”

Ah! I also have intoxicating memories. Happiness touched me I
shed those tears of which only one would console everything. No I have not
no right to complain, and yet I suffer cruelly.

This need to see you, which is deep in my heart,
often becomes acute, intolerable suffering, or rather, far
from you I do not live. It seems to me that I'm not the same anymore
man. This lively youth, this fullness of life, I do not
find more. Tell me, did you feel something
the blossoming that was in my soul when I told you
saw?

How good you are to regret me, to wait for me! But don't you
displease, it is quite useless for nature to pay for
my arrival. I wouldn't see much of it. That the cataracts of
sky open, the winds roar, I don't care, as long as
I am not delayed, as long as I arrive.

I wrote to your father. I will never be able to thank him enough,
love him enough and yet he is dear to me!

I am sending you a sprig of mignonette torn from the soil of France.
Poor France! Are we not a little crazy to love him so much. This
The boat which transported me to Calais seemed to me to be going very slowly.
Standing on the bridge I watched with ardent, full curiosity
with joy, and when I saw the earth, the _terre de France_, I
confess that all my blood quivers.

My eyes were darkened, but no matter what, I
recognized, the France of our ancestors, the beautiful, the noble, the
generous France.

Ah! dear friend, France, our ideal France, what have we done?
But, silence! ... It seems to me that I am going to insult my mother.

Pray to God that _Canadians will be true to themselves_, as
Garneau wanted it.

I make sure the Virgin Mary listens to you when you talk to her about
me.

I too put you in his care. May she bless you, may she
make me worthy of you.

I like You.

Maurice.



(Mina Darville to her brother)


I am at Valriant, my dear Maurice, and received as if I brought
spring in my furs. Of course we had to see everything
and talk thoroughly: that's what delayed me a little, me the
model of correspondents.

My friend, believe me, I don't sacrifice you by coming to pass
winter with Angéline. After you left the house was gone
habitable.

Besides, I'm tired of worldly life, that is to say of
life reduced to dust. Can you imagine if they made me
these representations. "The queen of beautiful nights is buried in the
campaign! the evening star will disappear, disappear! "

One of my admirers sent me a sonnet. I am compared to a
sovereign who abdicates, to a young star which hides, tired of
shine, and frankly, there is a thirteen foot worm.

But, if I kept telling you about me, wouldn't you find me
very kind? Don't be afraid, I am a good girl, and Angeline is
always the queen of roses; but she often has a haze on her
forehead, and it's your fault. My dear, you are very guilty. Why
to make you love it?

If you could see how she looks at your empty place at the table! I believe
that she would still gladly make you a cup of tea. Seriously,
are you sure you are so to be pitied? I was looking at her earlier
chatting with her by the fireside. The flame of the hearth lit her
whole and made his fiancee ring shine. One more
times you are not as miserable as you think you are. Where is the man
who would not accept _ your misfortune_ with transport? A year is fast
past. The weather has a light wing. No, absence is not the most
great ailments, especially when you have no fear or cold
nor inconstancy.

Maurice you absolutely want to know to what extent she
love you, and it is I who must study this heart so true. The task
is not without charms.

It's like I'm going to throw the probe into a spring,
shaded, deep, whose limpid waters would reflect the sky in
despite the foliage. Our conversations are lovely. The overflow
of his heart flows into it without ever exhausting itself. Your fine ear
would be very charmed. Learn that she smells your hat
straw to Nox so that he does not forget you. Sometimes I heard him
say, "Nox, are you bored? can you wait for him to come back? ... do you love him?
Beware Nox. You have to love it. He will be your master. Do you know that? ... "

Nox listens to everything and responds with big blows of the tail on the
floor.

Alas! Valriant no longer deserves his name. It is a pity to see the
garden but sweet hay still scents the surroundings of the pond.
I went there with Angeline. My dear, the walnut tree under which you have
made your statement is stripped like the others. These winds
fall respect nothing.

Do you know that I was predicted that I would die of boredom before the end of
Winter? But I doubt it a bit. I feel in me such
superabundance of life!

The sound of the sea woke up in my heart I don't know what
stormy, delicious, or rather I think there are, on the beach
de Valriant, an irresistible sylph who immediately takes hold of me
that I set foot on his domain.

This time it's worse than ever. These terrible easterly winds
enchant me. "I am entering with delight into the month of storms",
and I would often take the road to the strike; but this proud
autocrat who reigns here does not want it.

He said I would look like a idle waterfowl; His name is
disdainfully his cautious, his delicate. (Angeline never had the
cold of his life). As for him, he is going to take his bath like in the beautiful
midsummer.

All our plans are made for this winter; study has a place there,
but small. Thank god we are not

  "Of those rats which, gnawing books,
  They are learned to the point of their teeth. "

For you, you will be a speaker. We decided it unanimously; But
in private you will not have the right to speak longer than
others. Remember that.

As always, Angeline wears only white or blue. his father
did he not do well to dedicate it to the Virgin? What is she then
kind to him! How she guesses his least desires!

Nothing is small in love. Those who are waiting for the big ones
occasions to prove their tenderness do not know how to love. Put yourself
that long before in the mind, Maurice. Deep down, I think you
will make a very tolerable husband, "cold point and not jealous."

This is what I said earlier to Angéline. Be quiet,
I excel at showing you off; I will never give you that beautiful
defaults.

I kiss you as I love you, that is to say with all my heart.

Mina.

PS - Did you know that marriage is the sweet rest of heaven
terrestrial._ It is the Church which says it in the preface of the mass
bridal. Meditate on this liturgical word and do not write to me any more
lamentations.

Mr.

The following summer, Maurice Darville returned to Canada.

Human happiness is made up of so many parts, it has been said, that there are
still missing some. But nothing, absolutely nothing
was missed by the young, charming, deeply enamored fiancés. The future
appeared to them like an enchantment. Both had this
intoxicated confidence, that illusion of security that people often have
who love each other with the keenest, most irreproachable love and
divine bond will unite.

But a tragic event cruelly proved that happiness is a
plant, moreover, which never acclimates on earth.

M. de Montbrun was passionately fond of hunting. One day of the month of
September, as he was coming back, he embarrassed his rifle between the
branches of a tree; the blow went off and mortally wounded him.

M. de Montbrun died a few hours later, and this man,
so powerful ties attached to the earth, was admirable in strength and
of faith in the face of death.

Her daughter showed great courage at first, but she loved her father
of immense love, and, after the funeral which took place in
Quebec, in the Ursuline church, she fell into a prostration
complete, absolute, which made despair of his life.

No word can give the idea of ​​anxieties, of pain
of her fiancé. All that human creatures can do, Maurice
and Mina did it for Angeline.

They saved his life, but they could not tear him away if necessary.
to immerse oneself, to sink into his pain.

She had this intense feeling that refuses consolation,
which is incompatible with any joy. It is in vain that Maurice and
her sister tried to get her to have her marriage celebrated.

“Later, later. Please, Maurice, let me
cry, ”she replied, to the most irresistible pleas of
her fiance.

It had been decided that Mlle de Montbrun would not return to Valriant
until after his marriage. To this she willingly consented, but
unnecessarily, every effort was made to decide not to
to differ.

In the winter which followed the death of M. de Montbrun, Mlle Darville
entered the novitiate of the Ursulines.

Angeline did not oppose it, but the separation was cruel to her.
She loved the presence of this dear friend who dared not show
all his pain.

Mlle. De Montbrun did not complain; she never pronounced the
name of his father. But she cried over and over again, and her beautiful
health was not long in deteriorating very seriously.

In this young girl of a strangely deep sensitivity, the
pain seemed to act like poison. We saw her, literally,
wither and melt away. She sometimes had sudden failures,
one day when she went out alone, suddenly seized with weakness,
she fell on the pavement and bruised her face which had
very serious consequences. So much so that it was necessary to come to a
operation of which the poor child remained disfigured.

Maurice Darville loved his fiancée with incomparable love. His
misfortune, his sufferings, had made it even more dear to him,
and he had given him innumerable proofs of the most
complete, the most passionate.

But, as has been said, in a man's love, even when he
seems deep like the ocean, there are poverty, droughts
sudden. And when his fiancée had lost the enchanting charm of her
beauty, Maurice Darville's heart grows cold, or rather the
divine madness of love flew away. It is in vain that Maurice
tried to hold her back, to call her back. The more lively, the more
delicious feelings of our heart is also the most
involuntary.

Despite the care he took to let nothing show, Angeline
was not long in feeling the cooling. She didn't have it
apprehended.

Very lofty soul, she had not understood how much the loss of her
beauty exposed her to being loved less.

Her confidence in Maurice was absolute, but, once awakened, the
cruel anxiety left him no more rest. She didn't say
nothing, but she was watching Maurice. It was impossible for him to
to judge well; she suffered too much from her change not to
exaggerate it, and after terrible alternatives of hope and
doubt, she came to the poignant conviction that her fiancé
loved him more. She believed that it was honor and pity that
kept close to her. And his resolution soon taken was
firmly executed.

Despite Maurice Darville's protests, she returned his
word with the engagement ring and returned to Valriant.

This noble young girl, who isolated herself in her pain, with the
proud modesty of delicate souls, sometimes wrote a little. These
private pages may be of interest to those who have loved and suffered.




DETACHED SHEETS



May 7.

I looked forward to being at Valriant; but how cruel the arrival was to me!
how terrible these eight days have been! Delicious memories
as much as the poignant tear my heart. I like a
bleeding within, suffocating, without outlet. And no one to tell
words that relieve.

Do you hear me, father, when I speak to you? Do you know that your
poor girl comes back to you to hide, suffer and die? In
your arms, it seems to me that I would forget my misfortune.

Dear house that was his! where everything reminds me of it, where my heart
see it everywhere. _But never again, he will return to his
remain._ My God, forgive me. We should react against the
terrible need to immerse myself, to sink into my sadness. This
isolation that I wanted, that I still want, how to endure it?

Without doubt, when we are in pain, nothing is painful like the contact
indifferent. But Maurice, how to live without seeing him, without
hear it never, never! ... the overwhelming thought! ... It's night,
it is cold, it is death.

Here where I lived an ideal life so intense, so confident, it is necessary
so get used to the most terrible of loneliness, to the loneliness of
heart.

And yet, how he loved me! He had living, sovereign words,
that I still hear, that I will always hear.

In the boat, as I moved away from him, the waves
there were more of us, the memories came back to me more
lively. I saw him again as I had seen him on our funeral journey.
Oh! that he wept bitterly, that he shared my pain.
Now that I've broken up with him, I think a lot about what
binds me forever. So much effort on himself, so much care,
a pity so inexpressibly tender!

So it's true, I saw love dying out in her heart. My
God, how horrible it is to know that you are repulsive, to no longer have
nothing to expect from life.

I sometimes think of that young girl _cancer_ of whom speaks
by Maistre. She said, "I'm not as miserable as you are
believe it: God grants me the grace to think only of him. "

These wonderful feelings are not for me. But, my God, you
are almighty, keep me from despair, this crime of souls
cowards. O Lord! how rudely you treated me! that i feel
low! how sad I feel! Sometimes I fear for my reason. I
sleep so little, and besides, it would take the sleep of the earth to
make me forget.

The night after I arrived, when I thought everyone was asleep, I
got up. I took my lamp, and very slowly I went down to his
cabinet. There, I put the light in front of his portrait and I called him.

I was strangely excited. I was suffocating with tears, I was suffocating
memories, and, in a sort of bewilderment, in a madness of
regrets, I spoke to this dear portrait as to my father himself.

I closed the doors and shutters, I lit the chandeliers next to
the fireplace. Then his portrait was in full light - this
portrait that I love so much, not for the merit of the painting, which I
cannot judge, but for the adorable resemblance. Therefore
I spent the first night of my return. Eyes fixed on her
beautiful face, I was thinking of his incomparable tenderness, I
remembered her care so enlightened, so devoted, so tender.

Ah, if I could forget it how I would despise my heart! But
blessed be God! Death that took away my happiness, left me everything
my love.



May 8.

I thought I had already suffered too much to be capable of feeling
of joy. Well! I was wrong.

This morning, at dawn, the birds have long and
deliciously sung, and I listened to them with fondness
inexpressible. It seemed to me that these voices so tender and so pure to me
said: God is good. Hope in him.

I cried, but those tears weren't bitter, and since then
hour, I feel within myself a very gentle appeasement.

O my God, you will not leave me alone with my pain, you who
said, "I am near troubled hearts."



May 10.

My aunt is gone, and frankly ...

The company of this weak woman is not at all what I am
should. She is good, tireless in her care; but his pity
irritates me and irritates me. There is something in his compassion that
makes you feel so painfully the misfortune of having lost my beauty!

The joys of the heart are no longer for me, but I would like
the intimacy of a strong soul, which helped me to acquire the greatest,
the most difficult science: knowing how to suffer.



May 11.

I feel an inexpressible distaste for life and everything. Who will help me
to climb the rough path? Loneliness is good for the calm,
for the strong.

My God, _act with me; don't abandon me to the weakness of
my heart, nor to the dreams of my mind.

As soon as my strength has returned, I will try to make myself
engaging occupations. I would like to actively take care of
poor, as my dear good father used to do, but I'm afraid these
poor people do not think they are doing well, talking to me about my face,
Expressing their compassion to me, saying a thousand odious words to me.
Childish fears, vain weakness that must be overcome.



May 12.

In the world we pity those who fall from the top of the honors,
sizes. But the great misfortune is to fall from the heights of
love.

How can I get used to no longer seeing it, not hearing it? never!
never! My God! the secret of strength ... here my life has been a celebration
of light and now life appears to me like a tomb, a
tomb, minus the calm of death. Oh, the calm ... the rest ... the
peace ... God have mercy on me! _It's a horrible thing to have
felt everything we owned crumble without feeling the desire
to become attached to something permanent.



May 14.

Since my arrival, I had not wanted to go out, but tonight he
through my open window came an air so laden with saline that I
did not want to. A few minutes later, I was on the shore.

There was nobody. I lifted the thick veil without which I do not
go out more, and I breathed with delight the harsh and invigorating perfume
strikes. The beauty of nature, which once delighted me,
still pleases. I enjoyed the sight of the sea, the sweetness of the
evening, the dreamy melody of the waves lapping along the shore.
But a young man in a canoe passed by singing: _Rappelle-toi_, etc.

This romance of Musset, we have retained it from Maurice, and this song
reminded the bitter feeling of his indifference.

What will he say when he hears of my death? Poor child! Poor
Angeline! _ He will give me a thought for a few days then he
will forget me. - He has already forgotten that together we have hoped, loved,
suffered.

Even if I too could forget. And yet no, I don't
would not. It is better to remember. It is better to suffer. he
better cry.



May 17.

No, the law of compensation is not an empty word. I felt these
joys that touch the sky, but also I know these pains
that we should die of.



May 20.

Painful date! it was on September 20 that I lost my father.

The bad weather prevented me from going out. I regret. I will have
need to see the poor house where he was transported, after the
terrible accident which cost him his life. This house where he died,
I bought it. A poor woman lives there with her family, but I
reserved for myself the miserable little room, where he returned the
last breath.

All the pain of my life disappears in front of what I have
suffered on seeing my father die; and yet, oh my God, when
I want to strengthen my faith in your goodness, it is at this time of
heartbreak that I go back. How these memories are present to me!

He had endured everything without a complaint; but seeing me, a
a deep moan escaped him. He faints.

When knowledge returned to him, he painfully put his arm
my neck, but he didn't speak to me, he didn't look at me. He had the
eyes raised to an image of Our Lady of Sorrows, that four
pins fixed on the wall at the foot of his bed, and for as long
that I will live, I will see the expression of agony on his face.

For me, despite the terror, the shock of this hour, I do not
know how I kept calm. I had been told so much that I had to
being; that the slightest emotion would be fatal to him.

The ringing of the bell announced the approach of the
Blessed Sacrament. At that familiar sound he flinched, a tear rolled
on his pale cheek, he closed his eyes, and said to me with an effort: "My
daughter thinks of the One who is coming. "

It was the first word he spoke to me. Her voice was weak,
but quite distinct. I don't know what hope, what faith in the miracle
supported me.

O Master of life and death, I believed that you
would let touch. Lord, I offered you everything to redeem your
days, and, prostrate at your sacred feet, in my deadly anguish,
I implored your divine pity by the tears of your mother, by this
that she suffered when she saw you die.

No, I couldn't believe my misfortune. The word of resignation to me
felt like the cold of steel between flesh and bones, and
when after his communion, my father drew me to him and said:
"Angeline, it is the will of God that separates us" I burst out: This
that I say in the bewilderment of my pain, I ignore it; but i see
again the expression of his painful surprise.

He kissed the crucifix he held in his right hand, and said with
an accent of deep supplication:

"Lord, forgive her, the poor, child does not know what she
said."

For a few moments he remained absorbed in a prayer
intense. Then with what authority, with what tenderness he
_ ordered_, a word so rare on his lips, to say with him: That the
will of God be done!

My whole being revolted against this will and with what
strength! with what violence! But I couldn't, no I didn't
could not disobey him, and I say as he wanted.

So he blessed me, and resting my head on his chest where lay
his viaticum: “Savior love,” he repeated, “I give it to you ...
Lord Jesus, speak to her ... O Lord Jesus, console her. "

And I, in the agony of this moment ...

Compassionate Lord, Jesus, King of love, King of glory, our
divine brother, it's prostrate with my face to the ground, that I should
give you thanks. How do you strengthen your redeemed with
failures of your infinite strength, with the weight of your cross
bloody? In our hearts of flesh, what mingle with the pain that
pierces and who crushes? Almighty Jesus, you made me
accept, worship your will. I offered my heart to the sword, and in
this moment more painful than a thousand deaths, I had your kindness,
of your love, of your compassion, an overwhelming feeling.

Ah! in my hours of weakness and anguish, why don't
am I not always a refuge in this sacred memory? I would have there
found strength and peace. _Peace _... I had it in my heart
when my father expired in my arms, and when the priest recited the
_De profundis_, me, prostrate on the pavement of the room,
from the depths of my pain I cried again to God: May your will
be done.

When I got up, we had covered his face, and for
first time in my life, I passed out.

On regaining consciousness, I found myself lying on the grass. I live
Maurice leaned over me, and I felt his tears fall on my
face. The parish priest of Valriant then said to me: "My daughter, look at the
sky."

_My daughter _... this word, that my father would never say again, was to me
cruel to hear. And turning to the earth I cried.



May 22.

This morning, when I woke up, I saw a small canary fluttering
in my room.

Monique, who was knitting at the foot of my bed, told me: "It's a
present twins. They tamed it for you and you got it
brought this morning, going to catechism. ”

I held out my hand to the bird, which after a few coquetries,
came to pose. This dear little one! I only have it for a few
hours, and it would pity me to lose it. He is so nice
and sing so well. Isn't that kind of these children
for thinking of making me happy?

This evening, it took me a fancy to go and thank them. I have them
found sitting on the threshold of their little house. Marie, pretty and
cool to shame the roses, threaded black cohosh seeds to
make necklaces with it, and Paul watched her do it.

Seeing her so lovely, I remembered what I was, as
Maurice called me "_The flower of the fields" _ and a bitter sadness
grips the heart.

Nothing more pleasant, more touching to see, than the mutual
tenderness of these two beautiful children. "They cannot get lost in
view, ”says their grandmother, and it is quite true.

Poor little ones! what will become of the one of the two who will outlive the other?
Great affection is the great happiness of life, but
great joys great sorrows. Yet even after the
separation without return, who is the one who, to suffer less
would agree to have loved less.

My father loved these lines from Byron: "Give me back joy with
pain: I want to love as I loved, to suffer as I have
suffered ”.



May 23.

I have just visited my garden, which I had only glimpsed yet. This
brave Desire seemed quite proud to do the honors to me. But
It wasn't long before I saw that something was tiring him, and when
I said: "Desire, what is it" he replied:

--Mademoiselle, it's your beautiful rose bush drying on the stalk. I have
well done my best though!

Then he gave me a lot of explanations that I hardly have
heard. I looked at the poor shrub, which no longer has, well
say, that its thorns, and I thought of the day when Maurice brought it to me
so green, so covered with flowers.

What remains of these half-opened roses? what remains of these
perfumes?

Withered the illusions of life, withered the flowers of love!
Why cry? neither tears nor blood will bring them back to life.

Poor Maurice! His love for me darkened his youth a lot. With
what cruel anxiety, with what deadly anguish, he followed
the progress of this terrible evil!

It is true that with the hope of my recovery, the love died out
in his heart. He could not love me disfigured, and what man would have
made?

My God, where's the time that I found life too sweet and too
pretty? So I aroused the urge. We wondered why I was so
rich, so charming, so beloved.

And now, despite my fortune, a beggar would refuse to
change his fate against mine. Ah! that my father had suffered in me
seeing as I am! God be blessed to have spared him this
terrible ordeal.



(Angéline de Montbrun to Mina Darville)


Dear Mina,

Thank you and thank you again for your good letters. I look ungrateful
but I am not.

Apart from a few short notes to my aunt, I do not write
absolutely no one. I have a few letters from those we
called my friends. (Poor friendship! Poor friends!) I confess
that from one day to the next I believe less in _their deep sympathy._

Also, without the slightest remorse, I use my privileges as a patient,
and leave the letters unanswered. Be quiet, _ their
deep sympathy disturbs neither their rest nor their pleasures.
They all have the strength to endure the pain of others.

I find myself rather well with my stay in the countryside. It seems to me
that I no longer have this terrible fever which burned my blood. The
absolute rest and the fresh air calms me down, refreshes me. It is
true that my isolation is sometimes very painful to me; but always
I am rid of the condolences of these intruders who are,
like Job's friends, _ full of speech ._

Besides, may your good friendship be reassured. I am perfectly
well groomed. How many patients who lack everything!

In my hours of depression, I try to think of those who are
more to be pitied than me. You have never seen my pretty cottage
like this summer. It is a nest of greenery. Looks like it was done on purpose
to shelter happiness. The birds sing and chirp in
those beautiful trees that my father planted.

You ask me for details about the life I lead. You want
know who I get, what I do.

Really dear friend, the doctor excepted, I do not get to say well
nobody, but I walk around a bit, and I knit a lot, while
doing read for me.

I mainly stick to religion and history books. I have
need to lift my heart up high, and i love to see it come alive, under
my eyes, these glories, these grandeur which are now dust.

I spend all my evenings in his study, as I
used to when he lived. When the weather is fine, we
leave the windows open, and I make a big fire in the
fireplace.

Do you remember how my father loved to stay in the corner of the
fire. "My home, my sweet home," he often said. Mina, I don't
am not yet made to separation without return.

Often, when a door opens, I jump. It seems to me
that he will enter. But no, he won't come to me anymore. It's me who
I will join him, under the pavement of this dear Ursuline church,
where he wanted to rest next to my mother.

I put his portrait above the fireplace. I've never seen one
of such a striking resemblance. Sometimes when I contemplate it, to
the somewhat uncertain glow of the hearth, I think it comes alive, it
will open your arms to me, but it's a moment's illusion, and immediately,
I see him dead, buried, lying in the coffin under the earth,
with my crucifix and the image of the Virgin in her clasped hands.

My friend, pray for me. Dear Mina, I am nothing anymore, or at
more, I am little for your brother; but you are and you
will always be my dear sister.

Ah! I liked to call you by that name, and I don't forget that
entering the convent, you said that separating you from me was a
sacrifice worthy of being offered to God.

As for my behavior towards Maurice, you are wrong to blame her.
No doubt, as a man of heart and honor, he wanted to keep his
engagement, and celebrate our marriage; but could i
accept this sacrifice?

I assure you the whole world wouldn't make me go back to my
refusal. Poor Maurice! he asked if his care, if his tenderness did not
wouldn't help me endure life. Mina, her presence, her only
presence would soften me all, if he still loved me, but he no longer
for me that pity - and that I would have quickly torn what I
just wrote, if I was not sure he will always ignore it.

How time passes! You are already on the eve of your wedding
sacred. You say that on this day your most ardent prayer will be
for me. Thanks, Mina. Ask Jesus Christ that I love him before
to die.

Dear sister, I would like to attend your profession. I would like
hear you say your vows, those vows that will separate you
forever from the deceitful and deceived world. Happy are those who
expect nothing from life! Happy are those who ask nothing of
creatures!

O my friend, love your divine Crucified, for He will always love you.
He is infinite goodness. He is the eternal, the incomprehensible love.
And with what joy I would give what I have to feel these
truths, as I felt them in the arms of my dying father.
But I lost that clear sight of God that was given to me on time
unspeakable anguish.

Dear sister, in the first months of my mourning, you were a
angel for me. Maurice too, and yet it is not your care,
it was not your tenderness that made me live.

What sustained me was the remembrance of the goodness of God,
inexpressibly felt and tasted at the dreadful hour of
sacrifice - at this hour when I suffered more than to die.

You, Mina, you know what my father was to me. And who at
my place would not have loved him ardently and deeply? All
evenings, after my prayers, I kneel in front of his portrait, as
I liked to do it in front of him, and very often I cry.

Pardon me for speaking to you so long about my troubles. I don't say
never nothing, and I would need expansion. Alas! I think without
cease to the delicious life of yesteryear.

O my friend, I would like to cry in your arms, but here is
the impassable gate of a cloister will separate us forever.
Farewell.



May 30.

The night is very late, but I watch, thinking of Mina who, in
a few hours, will pronounce his vows. O nobility of life
religious! And who said that in the human soul there is a
mystery of elevation? Mina is Maurice's sister, she has been the friend
darling of my youth, and yet, despite the sweetness of these
memories, it is not the image of the old Mina that dominates
in my thoughts; it is that of the virgin who sleeps over there under the
guard of the angels, while awaiting the hour of his consecration to the
Lord.

Dear Mina! what will the one she chose say to her when the sound of
bell will warn him that the hour has finally come? Ah, I would like to be
there to see it, to hear it! But we would have to meet
Maurice, and I did not feel the strength.

Will he think of me? ... When Mina took the religious habit, I was at
next to him in the chapel of St. Philomena. Before the ceremony,
we were in the visiting room for a long time alone with Mina. His toilet of
bride suited her perfectly, and she was calm! and with what
heavenly tenderness she spoke to us!

In the evening Maurice came to my aunt's house. Someone having stood up against
religious life, Maurice, still affected by the emotions of
the day, replied reading this part of a lecture
of Lacordaire, where the illustrious Dominican proves the divinity of
Jesus Christ by the love he inspires, by the sacrifices he
asks, and _whose all the centuries pay homage to him._ Maurice
read these eloquent pages admirably, and I think I hear it
even when he said: "There is a man whose love keeps
falls."

"There is a man scourged, killed, sacrificed, with an unspeakable passion
rises from death and infamy, to place him in glory
of a love that never fails, of a love that finds in him
peace, honor joy and even ecstasy. "

O wonderful Jesus, this is true!

"For us, as Lacordaire still said, pursuing love
all our life we ​​never get it that one way
imperfect, and which makes our hearts bleed. "

Yes, Mina chose the better part. Love in man is like
those straw fires which initially throw a lot of flames, but which
soon offer only a light ash that the wind carries and
disperses without return.



June 2.

Like me, my old Monique loves the sea. So we take a walk
often on the strike.

This afternoon I met Marie Desroches, my former
comrade. She threw herself on my neck with an impulse that touched me,
and looking at me she cried - beautiful sincere tears.
gladly accepted her invitation to visit her.

As a child, I loved the society of this little savage who was not afraid
nothing, and envied her the freedom she enjoyed. Fortunately
this almost absolute freedom was not harmful to him.

  "You can feel just seeing her her deep dignity!"
  From this heart without silt, no wind has disturbed the wave. "

Marie must have good taste and industry, for this
hut, lost in the rocks, is pleasant. Without doubt, the
cozy is far away, but thanks to the greenery and flowers it is
pretty.

So that we could talk freely, Marie made me pass in
the small room she shares with her sister. The charming statue
of the Blessed Virgin that my father gave her, when she had lost her
mother, occupies the place of honor. A vigorous ivy surrounds it
graciously.

It is sweet to the soul and sweet to the eyes; and I was well touched by
perceiving, in this young girl's room, the photograph of
my father, framed by immortelles and dried moss.

"Marie," I said to her, "you haven't forgotten her?"

And I still have in my ear the accent with which she answered
"Ah, Miss, I will die before I forget it."

This young girl spends her life caring for the household, making and
mend the nets that his father uses to take the
fish that he will sell for four cents a dozen. And yet like
her life seems sweet to me! She has health, beauty.

One of these days an honest man will love her, and by loving her will become
better. Her heart is calm, her soul serene. She doesn't know
the bitter sorrows, the consuming regrets. My god do
may she always ignore them, and give me peace - the peace of
heart, waiting for the peace of the tomb.



June 4.

I have just learned that Miss Désileux died yesterday at her farm in
Aulnets. Poor daughter! what a sad life!

My father said she had a big heart. He led me to see her
from time to time, and the first few times, I still remember,
with what care he recommended that I be kind to her, not
not seem to notice its awful ugliness.

`` You see, '' he would say, `` she knows she's awful, and she must
try to make him forget this terrible truth.

Why is this adorable goodness so rare? If Maurice had the
delicacy of my father, maybe he could have made me forget that
I can no longer be loved.

Poor Miss Désileux! At the beginning, she inspired me
very great repulsion, but when my father told me in his tone
easier: "Angeline, go and kiss Mademoiselle Désileux", I
bravely did so. And then that I was proud of
to hear him tell me that he was happy with me; because very small, I
I loved him already with great tenderness, and when he showed himself
satisfied with my conduct, I looked into the stars.

It was his opinion that too demonstrative affection softened the
character, hinders the development of the will which so badly needs
to be fortified; also, despite his extreme love for me,
usually he was very sober in caresses.

But when I had perfectly satisfied him, he would testify to me
always in the most kind and tender way. Sometimes
so, despite his admirable self-control, he escaped from
sudden explosions of tenderness with which I was delighted, and which
proved how much the constraint he imposed on himself
had to weigh.

I remember that one day we were reading the life of the
mother of the Incarnation, he shed tears, at that place where his
son says she never kissed him - not even when he left
for Canada, - when she knew how to say goodbye to him forever.



(Véronique Désileux to Angéline de Montbrun)


Miss,

I feel my end is near and I am gathering my strength for you
to write. When you receive this letter, I will be dead. God
may my voice, passing through the grave, bring you something
consolation!

Ah, dear Mademoiselle, how I have suffered from your sorrows! that I
would be happy if I could soften them, and prove to you my
gratitude, because you and your father have been good,
really good for poor Véronique Désileux. And be sure,
it is alms blessed by God, that of a loving word,
of a testimony of interest to the poor disinherited of all sympathy
human.

If you only knew how kind kindness is to those who have no
never been loved! In the world, we seem to believe that people
disgraced have no heart, and would to Heaven that no one was mistaken
point!

I leave you everything I own: my farm and my furniture.
Please dispose of it as you please - and don't deny me a
remember sometimes.

If I could tell you how I cried for your father! God to me
forgiven! in the madness of my pain, I would have liked to do, like
the faithful dog who crawls over the grave of his master, and there
let die.

So yet I didn't know how good he had been
for the poor disgraced; it is only in recent days that
I learned what I owe him.

So know that when my father died, fifteen years ago, I
would be found absolutely destitute if M. de Montbrun had
demanded payment of what was owed to him. But learning that my
father was ruined, all I had left was the farm
Aulnets, and that she would have to be sold to pay for it: "Poor girl
he said, his life is already sad enough! ”

And immediately he made a receipt for the amount of the debt, signed it,
and gave it to ML, making him promise the most inviolable
secret. ML told me this after receiving my will.

"At the point where you are, he said to me, it can't
humiliate." And he's right.

Dear Mademoiselle, since I know these things, I have thought about them
often. I kept to your father, a gratitude
deep for the interest he showed me, for the courtesy
perfect with which he always treated me, and on the eve of
die, I learn that I owed him rest, independence and
joy of being able to give often.

What can I not do for you, _ his daughter! _ They say that you
have shown great courage, but I guess what poignant
regrets, what mortal sorrows you hide under your calm,
and how many times have I wept over you!

Ah, if I could make you see the nothingness of what passes like one
sees him in the face of death! You would quickly be consoled.

My hour has come, yours will come, and soon, "for the hours
No matter how long they seem, the years are always short. "

Then you will understand the purpose of life, and you will see what
designs of mercy are hidden under the mysterious harshness of
Providence.

Now I see that my life could be a life of blessings!
At this hour when everything escapes, how rich I would be!

I have lived without friendship, without love. My father himself, did not know
hide the repugnance I inspired in him. But if, accepting
all rejects, all humiliations, from a humble heart and
peaceful, I had placed them at the feet of Jesus Christ, with
what confidence I would say today as the divine Savior, the
the day before his death: _I did what you gave me to do,
glorify me now, my father.

Alas, I suffered badly! _But as the sky is above
the earth, so much has he established his mercy on us.
meditate on this beautiful word while looking at the sky. Yes I hope. Born
fear not, Our Lord told me, when he came into my soul,
do not worry; ask me forgiveness for not having known how to suffer for
the love of me, who loved you until the death of the cross. Ah,
why, did I not like it? He would not have disdained my tenderness.

My dear child, I would have liked to see you before I died.
But I was told that a journey of a few leagues was a lot
for your strength - that it was better to spare yourself the emotions
painful - and I did not dare to ask you to come.

However, it seems to me that this visit would not have been useless to you.
Better than anyone, I think I understand what you are suffering from.

Poor child so tried, would it not be for you this word
of the Imitation: "Jesus Christ wants to possess your heart alone, and
reign like a king on his throne. "

An author, whom I love, says that we can exaggerate many
things, but that we can never overstate the love of
Jesus Christ. Meditate on this sweet and deep truth. Think of
the incomparable friend. Make it his place in your heart, and he'll
will be what never father, never husband was.

And now, dear daughter of my benefactor, farewell. Goodbye, and
courage. Suffering passes, but if you accept the divine will,
having suffered will never pass.

Yours for eternity.

Véronique Désileux.



June 12.

My God, give eternal happiness to the one who has suffered so much.
Forgive if sometimes she has weakened under the weight of her terrible
cross.

I often reread his letter. This voice that is no longer of this world to me
makes cry. Poor daughter! His memory does not leave me. Thought
what she has suffered tears me away from the feeling of my sorrows.

Last night I had a dream that left me with a strange
impression.

It seemed to me that I was in a cemetery. The grass was growing
freely between the crosses, several of which were falling into ruins. I
walked haphazardly, thinking of the poor dead, when a grave
news caught my attention.

As I bent down to examine it, the freshly stirred earth
suddenly became transparent like the purest crystal, and I saw
Véronique Désileux at the bottom of her pit. She seemed immersed
in deep recollection; under the sheet that covered them, we
could make out his hands joined in eternal prayer.

I looked at her, invincibly drawn to the stillness of the grave,
by the rest of death, and I questioned him, I asked him if
she regretted having suffered, never having inspired anything but
pity.



June 18.

ML came to tell me that I was inheriting from Mlle Désileux. I do not
did not want to receive it, but he insisted so much that I consented to it.

Fortunately, this businessman is also a man of tact. Not
of those expressions of interest that offend, not of that compassion that
it hurts. Only, when he left me, he said to me: "You have a lot
suffered, and it shows. But yet you still look like
your father."

This word was very sensitive to me. O dear likeness, who
was my mother's pride and his own joy.

ML spoke to me throughout my father's conduct towards the poor
Miss Désileux, and told me several features that prove
also a very rare disinterestedness and delicacy.

"Be sure," he told me, "that there are many that we will ignore.
always."

Yes, this divine law of charity, he filled it in its broad
and sweet fullness. How carefully did he not train me to this great
duty!

I was still a child, and he was already using me for his
alms. For encouragement, for reward, he offered me
always some misfortune to relieve, and its great punishment,
it was to deprive myself of the joy of giving. But he forgave quickly.
And the sweetness of those moments when I cried, in his arms, the
woe to have displeased him.



June 22.

Since yesterday, I have been in Les Aulnets. When I arrived, I went to see the
tomb of Mlle Désileux, where a few blades of grass are already growing. The
house had been closed since the funeral. Her old maid is
came to open the door for me, and what impression made me the silence
sepulchral that reigned everywhere.

I dared not step into these dark rooms, where a few rays of
light barely penetrated between the closed shutters.

Poor fool that I am! I came to strengthen myself by the
thought of death, and I constantly surprise myself, thinking of
Maurice, how he will feel when he returns to Valriant - because he
will come back to that. I will leave my house to him.

What will the seals say to him everywhere, the empty and dark rooms,
deep silence. This house, which he called his paradise,
will he be able to cross the threshold without his heart being troubled?
Will not memories arise from all sides, sad and
tender, in front of him? Won't the voice of the past be heard
in this gloomy silence?

Oh my God! here I am relapsing into my weaknesses. What does it matter to me
that he cries to me? Could nothing tear me away from this fatal love?
What! neither distance, nor time, nor religion, nor death! ...

Woe to me! I can tell myself that I no longer exist for him, I
love him, as only the unfortunate can love.



June 24.

From my window, I can see the cemetery very well, and I can see
perfectly the place where Véronique Désileux rests. Her maid to me
said she often spent whole hours here. Like all
condemned to solitary confinement, she loved the sight of nature, and
perhaps also that of the cemetery.

Among the dead sleeping there, is there one who suffered more
what!

Will we ever know what is gathering sadness and pain in
the soul of the unfortunate condemned to be always and everywhere ridiculous?
What are the glaring misfortunes compared to these lives all of
rejections, humiliations, ruffles? And he was a fiery soul!
Ah! my God!

How I regret not having come to see her! My presence would have softened
his last days. We would have talked about my father together. The
unhappy loved him, and nothing in the feelings of the happy
world can not make suspect how far.

When these poor hearts always hurt, always despised, dare
love, they love. She never got over the news of her
dead, and I cannot think, without shedding tears, of the overwhelming
mortal where she remained immersed.

Yesterday evening, the maid told me a lot of things, while turning
his spinning wheel in front of his kitchen hearth. Sometimes she stopped
suddenly, and glanced furtively towards the bedroom of his
mistress - which made me run chills. It seemed to me that
I was going to see it appear.

What a mystery is death! how this terrible disappearance is
difficult to achieve! After my father died, when we said to
Miss Désileux that in time, I would console myself: "Never, never",
she cried, covering her face.

It is impossible to say the pity she had for me. The night
even after her death, she still felt sorry for my misfortune, and
repeated to the person who looked after her: "Tell her that God
rest."

O my friend, get me to understand this word!

What is life? "However brilliant the room may be, the
last act is always bloody. We finally throw earth on
the head and here it is for ever! "



June 26.

From my visit to the Aulnets I took _Tout pour Jésus_, book
beloved of Mlle Désileux; and, my God, with what emotion I have
you on the next page, which had in the margin the date of the death of my
dad!

"Look at this soul who has just heard his judgment: hardly Jesus
has he finished speaking, the sound of his sweet voice is not yet
turned off, and those who cry have not yet closed their eyes
body far from which life has fled: yet judgment is rendered, everything
is consumed; he was short, but merciful. What did I say?
merciful the word cannot say what he was. that
the imagination finds it. Someday, if it pleases God, we'll make it
the sweet experience ourselves. This soul must be alright
strong so as not to succumb to the liveliness of feelings which
take hold of her; she needs God to support her so as not to
to be wiped out. His life has passed; how short it was! his death
has arrived; how sweet his agony for a moment! like the
trials seem a weakness, sorrows a misery,
afflictions childishness! And now she got a bliss
that will never end. Jesus has spoken, doubt is no longer possible.
What is this happiness? The eye has not seen it, the ear has not
heard. She sees God, eternity stretches before her, in her
infinite. The darkness is gone, the weakness is gone, he
the time which once despaired her is no longer. No more ignorance,
she sees God, her intelligence feels flooded with delights
ineffable, she drew new strength from that glory that
the imagination cannot conceive; she is satisfied with this
vision, in the presence of which all the science of the world is only
darkness and ignorance. His will swims in a torrent of love;
as a sponge fills with the waters of the sea, it fills with
light, beauty, happiness, rapture, immortality,
God. These are just empty words lighter than the pen, more
weak than water; they cannot remind the imagination itself
the shadow of this soul's happiness.

And we are still here! O boredom! oh sadness! ”



(Angéline de Montbrun to Mina Darville)


You have not forgotten our trip to Les Aulnets, nor this poor
Miss Désileux so misshapen. She is no more and after her death I was
delivered a letter from her that will not be useless.

Mina, how this poor disgraced woman loved us, my father and me! and
how she suffered!

It's over, now the earth has been trodden on her poor body,
and for me, here is Véronique Désileux among these dear shadows that
drags after you, as you advance in life.

I received your two letters, and many things deeply touched me
affected. You know how he pitied you in his last hour, and
willingly, I would say like him: "Poor little Mina."

Your brother sent me from your hair. Please thank him for my
leaves, and make him understand that he should no longer write to me. To what
Well!

Dear sister, I cannot look without emotion on these beautiful curls
brunettes that you arranged so well. Who would have told us that one day this
superb hair would fall under the monastic chisel? a wimple
white canvas would surround your charming face?

My dear socialite of old, how I would like to see you under
your black veil.

So, here you are consecrated to God, obliged to love Our Lord
with a love of virgin and bride.

What people say against perpetual vows revolts me. Shame in the heart
who, when he loves, can foresee that he will stop loving.

My friend, I hardly sleep, and when I hear four o'clock strike,
your memory always comes back to me. My thought follows you, everything
touched, in those long corridors of the Ursulines.

I attended the prayer of the nuns. I loved to see them
motionless in their stalls, and all heads, young and
old, inclined under the thought of eternity. Eternity, this
sea ​​without shores, this bottomless abyss where we will all disappear!

If I could penetrate myself with this thought! But I don't know which
tremendous weight binds me to the earth. Where are the wings of my
childish candor? So I felt carried on high by love.
My soul, like a captive bird, always tended to soar. Oh! the
the deep charm of these childish reveries on God, on the other life.

I loved my father with ardent tenderness, and yet I
would have left it without regret for my heavenly father. Mina, it was there
thanks still entire for my baptism. Now the Christian
blinded by her faults, no longer understands what was understood
the innocence of the child. Mina, I saw the abyss of despair up close.
Neither God nor my father are happy with me, and that thought adds
again to my sorrows.

In your cheerful Ursuline chapel, I especially loved the
Chapel of the Saints, where I prayed better than elsewhere. During my
stay at the boarding school, every day I would burn a
candle, so that the Blessed Virgin might bring back my father safe and sound,
and now, I would like that there, at the feet of Notre-Dame du
Great Power, a lamp burned night and day so that it
lead to him.

I am delighted that you are sacristine. You do if
wonderfully the bouquets. What beautiful baskets of flowers I will
would send, if you weren't so far away.

My dear Mina, be blessed for the fond memory you give to
my father. Since your office allows you to go to church, I
Please don't go a day without kneeling on the pavement
that covers it. This pit so narrow, so cold, so dark, I
always have it in front of my eyes. You say that in the sky it is
closer to me than before.

Mina, the sky is very high, very far, and I am a poor woman
creature. You cannot understand how much I miss him, and the
need, the overwhelming need to feel tight against her heart.

Time can do nothing for me. As Eugenie de Guérin said, the
great pains go digging like the sea. And did she know it?
like me! She couldn't love her brother like I loved my father.
She didn't get everything from him. Then nothing had prepared me for my
misfortune. He had all the vigor, all the elasticity, all the
youthful charm. Her life was so active, so calm, so healthy,
and her health so perfect. Without this fatal accident! Perhaps this is
_a perfidy of pain_, but I always come back to that.

My friend, you know that I don't gladly complain, but your
friendship is so faithful, your sympathy so tender, that with you my
heart opens in spite of me. My health is improving. Who knows how many
time I will live. Implore peace for me, this supreme good of
dead hearts.

Angeline.



1st of July.

  "Why in my mind do you keep coming back
  O days of my childhood and my joy?
  Who therefore always reopens you in our almost extinct hearts,
  O luminous flower of distant memories? ”

Among my father's papers, I found several of my notebooks
studies he had kept; and as it brought me back to these
blessed days when I worked before his eyes, surrounded, penetrated by
his warm tenderness. What care did he not take to return me
pleasant study. He wanted me to grow up happy, joyful,
in the freedom of the countryside, among greenery and flowers, and
for this he did not shrink from the sacrifice of his tastes and
his habits.

The sight of these notebooks touched me deeply. I cried
long time. O the blessing of tears! Sometimes this divine source
absolutely dries up. So I remain immersed in a bleak
sadness. In vain then, I seek my good feelings, my
courageous resolutions. Pain, this virile friend, uplifts and
strengthens, but sorrow devastates the soul. How to guarantee
this consuming languor?

I hardly live in the present, and in order not to see the future, who
appears to me like a dreary and sorry loneliness, I think of the past
all gone. So the castaway, who only has space in front
him, turns around, and in his mortal distress, questions the sea where
no longer floats a wreck.

Yes, everything is gone. O my God, leave me the bitter pleasure of
tears!



July 3.

I shouldn't read the _Meditations_. That soft and tender voice
has too much echo in my heart. I get drunk on these dangerous
sadness, of these passionate regrets. Insane! I implore peace
and I'm looking for trouble. I'm like a wounded man who feels a
bitter pleasure in inflaming his wounds, in seeing their blood flow.

Where will this painful excitement lead me? I try weakly
to take me back to the charming aspect of the countryside, but

  "The sun of the living no longer warms the dead."



July 6.

Forget! is it a good? Can I desire it?

Forget that we have carried within ourselves the dazzling whiteness of its
baptism, and the divine beauty of perfect innocence.

Forget the unbearable shame of the first taint, the
salutary bitterness of the first remorse.

Forget the harsh and invigorating flavor of renunciation; the joys
deep, religious terrors of the faith.

Forget the longings for infinity, the blessed sweetness of tears,
the delicious dreams of the virginal soul, the first glances cast
on the future, that enchanted distance illuminated by love.

Forget the sacred joys of the heart, the bloody heartbreaks and
the illuminations of sacrifice, the revelations of pain.

Forget the clarities from above; the rays that escape from the
falls; the voices that come from the earth, when what we loved
more is gone.

Forget that we were the object of an incomparable tenderness that we believed
to the immortality of love.

Forget that enthusiasm made the heart beat; that the soul has
moved by the beauty of nature; that she moved on
flower seized by the cold, on the nest where the snow was falling, on the
stream that flowed between the bare trees.

Forget! let the past close its abyss on the best
part of oneself! Don't keep anything! remember nothing! Those we
loved, to see them disappear from his thought as from his life the
feel it falling to powder in his heart!

No, the consolation is not there!



July 7.

Consolation is to accept the will of God, is to dream
to the joy of seeing him again, is knowing that I loved him as much as I
could love.

In what a delicious union we lived together! Nothing to me
cost to please him; but I knew the rustles
involuntary are inevitable, and to erase all traces,
I rarely left him in the evening without asking his forgiveness. Dear and
sweet habit that brought me back to him the day before his death. When
I think of this day of the 19th! What happy fools we
were, Mina and I! Never had a day so painful a vigil so
happy? How I blessed God, then, for following the inspiration
which carried me towards my father. This last interview will remain one of the
strengths of my life.

I found him reading quietly. Nox slept at his feet
in front of the fireplace, where the fire was going to go out. I remember that
door, I paused for a moment to enjoy the charming appearance of
the room. He was passionately fond of greenery and flowers and I
put everywhere. Through the open window, through the foliage,
I saw the calm sea, the radiant sky. Without looking up
of his book, my father asked me what was there. I approached,
and kneeling down, as I often did in front of him, I
say I couldn't fall asleep without the certainty that no shadow
no coldness had slipped between us, without asking for forgiveness,
if I had had the misfortune to displease him in something.

I still see his half amused, half touched look. He kissed me
on the hair, calling me _ his dear fool_, and made me sit
to chat. He was in his playful hours, and so his
speech, wavy and light, had a singular charm. I do not have
known a person whose gaiety took hold so quickly.

But that evening something solemn oppressed me. I myself
felt moved without knowing why. All I owed her was
came to mind. It seemed to me that I never liked
his has admirable tenderness. I felt a great need to
thank, cherish it. Midnight struck. Never had it seemed to me
so gloomy, had not made such a mournful impression on me. A fear
vague and terrible entered me. This room so pretty, so laughing to me
suddenly had the effect of a tomb.

I got up to hide my confusion and approached the window. The
sea ​​had retreated to sea, but the faint sound of the waves
happened to me at intervals. I was resolutely trying to strengthen my
heart, because I did not want to sadden my father. He started in
the apartment one of those comings and goings that were his habit.
_Tintoretto's daughter was in full light. By the way,
his gaze fell on this painting he loved, and a shadow
pain covered her face. After a few laps he stopped
ahead and remained gloomy and dreamy, considering it. I observed him
without daring to follow his thought. Our eyes met and her tears
gushed out. He stretched out his arms to me and sobbed "O my supreme good!" oh
my Tintorella! ”

I burst into tears. This sudden and extraordinary emotion,
responding to my secret anguish, terrified me, and I cried out "My
God, my God! what will happen then? ”

He recovered instantly, and tried to reassure me, but I felt
the violent beating of his heart, while he repeated
calmest voice: "It's nothing, it's nothing, it's the
sympathy for poor Jacques Robusti. ”

And as I was still crying and shivering in his arms, he told me
carried on the loveseat by the fire; then he went to shut up
window, and then put a few pieces of wood on the embers.

The flame soon rose bright and bright. So coming back to me
he asked me why I was so upset. I confessed my
terrors.

“Bah! he said lightly, nerves. " And as I insisted, saying
that he too had felt the approach of misfortune, he said to me:

"I had a moment of emotion, but you know it, Mina assures me that I
an artistic nature. "

He bantered me, reasoned with me, cuddled me, and as I stayed
quite confused, he drew me to him and asked me gravely:

"My child, if, me, your father, I had the entire disposal of your
future, would you be terrified? ”

So, starting from there, he spoke to me with adorable tenderness of
madness, the absurdity of distrust of God.

His faith entered me like vigor. The wave, the horrible
fear disappeared. Never, no never had I felt so
deeply loved. Yet I understood - and with what luminosity
clarity - that nothing in human tenderness can do
to suspect what the love of God for his creatures is.

O my God, your grace prepared me for the most terrible of
sacrifices. It is my fault, my very great fault, if the brilliant
light, which rose in my soul, was not growing until
this day.

Singular thing! the scent of heliotrope always carries me to
this sacred hour - the last of my happiness. That evening he
wore a flower in her buttonhole, and this perfume remained for
never mingled with memories of that evening, the last he had
spent on earth.



July 8.

When I live a long time, I will never leave my dress
black, I will never leave my mourning.

After the death of my mother, he dedicated me to the Virgin, and also
far as I can remember I have always worn its colors.
Could she forget it? It is for my orphan veils that I have
abandoned his livery, which I was not to leave until my wedding. These
virginal colors appealed to everyone, especially my father.
He told me he never let a day go by without reminding
the Blessed Virgin that I belonged to him.



July 10.

The Tuesday before his death, early in the morning, we got on the
cap. Nothing is beautiful like the morning of a beautiful day, and I never
only saw the sun rise so radiant this morning. Around
us, everything shone, everything shone. But, indifferent to this
lovely spectacle, my father remained immersed in meditation
deep. I asked him what he was looking at in himself and
answering my question with another, as it was kinda sound
usually he says to me: "Do you sometimes think of this fire of love?
that the sight of God will kindle in our soul? "

I was unwilling to follow him to these high regions, and I
replied cheerfully: "In the meantime, hold me tight to your heart."

`` My poor child, '' he then went on, `` we are truly earthly,
but sometimes this thrill of nature at the approach of the sun
deeply moved me, and all my soul rushed to God.

The expression on his face hit me. His eyes were full of a
light that I had never seen there. Was it the light of
the eternity that was beginning to appear to him? He was so close - and
with what consolation I remembered all this, listening to the
story that Saint Augustine left us, of his rapture during
that he watched, with his mother, the sky and the sea of ​​Ostia.

I love Saint Augustine, that deep heart, which wept so tenderly for its
mother and her friend. One day, leaving his beliefs to his people
superstitious, the _son of so many tears_ said: "No, the dead
do not come back ”: and her loving soul gives this touching
reason: "I would have seen my mother again."

And I poor girl, can't I also say: The dead don't
not come back, I would have seen my father again. Him, so tender for my
least sorrows, he who was like a lost soul as soon as he
had me more.

So many sorry calls, so many passionate pleas and always
the inexorable silence, the silence of death.



July 12.

I love to see the sun disappear through the tall trees of
the forest; there she is already stripping off her adornment of light to
to envelop himself in shadow. On the horizon the clouds grow pale. We say beautiful
like a cloudless sky, and yet the clouds are beautiful
when they go out of the evening fires! Sometimes while admiring these
brightly colored groups, I thought about what the love of
God can make our sorrows, since the light penetrating from
dark vapors, makes it a wonderful adornment in the sky.

When the weather is nice at nightfall, I walk around in my
beautiful garden - this garden so delicious, said Maurice, that
lovers alone should enter it.

It's lovely to hear the birds calling each other in the trees.
Before returning to their nests, there are some who come to drink and
bathe at the edge of the stream. This stream, which falls from the mountain
with the air of a torrent, flows here so smooth; it's a pleasure to follow
these graceful detours. Looks like he can't bring himself to leave
the garden; I like this faint noise among the flowers.

  "The images of my youth
  Rise with this voice:
  They flood me with sadness
  And I remember the old days. ”



July 13.

My canary is bored; he flaps his wing against the windows.

Poor little! to feel wings and not be able to spread them
Who does not know this suffering? Who has not come up against
painful bounds? Who does not know the torment of the helpless
aspiration?



July 15th.

I gave the farm of Aulnets to Marie Desroches and this act
nice to sign. What would I have done with this property? I am
already too rich perhaps, and besides if his death had been less
prompt, my father, I'm sure, would have left something
to his pretty goddaughter whom he loved. For her, this farm,
it is the happy and peaceful old age of his father, it is the future
insured. Also his joy is beautiful to see.



July 16.

Every Sunday after Vespers, Paul and Mary come to see me,
a little, I think, out of affection for me, and a lot out of tenderness
for the canary which keeps them a shade of preference which they do not
are quite proud.

These nice children are charming in their first toilet
Communion. Marie especially is chewable with her white dress, and the
pretty blue rosary she wears as a necklace. Paul starts
to get used to seeing her so beautiful, but the first times he had
glare. On the day of their first communion, I invited them to
dinner, and having left them alone for a moment, I found them
looked at each other with deep admiration. These kind
children often bring me corallorhize for the baskets.
Marie tells their little adventures very well.

The other day, going to get their cow, they sat down
on a big rock to rest, when a huge snake
leaned his hideous head out from under the rock.

Marie believed her last hour had arrived and began to run; but Paul
keeping her cool, made her climb onto a fence. Then he
walked resolutely towards the big rock, and stoned the snake and
its young. There were seven of them. Marie still shuddered as she thought
that she was so close to a nest of snakes.

Since that day, her little brother has taken the proportions for her
of a hero. "He is not afraid of anything," she said with conviction, and Paul
modestly triumphs.

I love these children. Their conversation leaves me with something
fresh and sweet. I would gladly satisfy all their
small desires, but I would fear that their visits would become
interested; so usually I only give them a little
wine for their grandmother. They leave happy.



July 20.

The bright day darkens me strangely, but I like the half-light
golden, the soft and soft light of twilight.

Despite the permanent sadness deep in my soul, the beauty of
nature sometimes plunges me into delicious reveries. But it is necessary
always end up returning, and then the feeling of my isolation
comes back to me with new strength. At times, I feel a need
absolutely irresistible to see and hear Maurice again. I need
a desperate effort not to write to him: Come.

And true to his word he would come ...



July 21.

Did he only love in me my beauty? Ah! this cruel astonishment of
blade. It remained deep in my heart like a sharp pain,
intolerable. What is time, what can reason
do for me? I am a woman who needs to be loved.

Sometimes it takes a terrible effort for me to endure the care of
my servants. And yet they are attached to me, and the most
humble affection has its price?

My God, that I know how to overcome myself, that I am not ungrateful, that
I'm not making anyone suffer.



July 23.

Delicious time. For the first time, I took a bath in the sea, this
which earned me a few minutes of serenity. I used to be there
the country's first bather - the queen of strikes, said Maurice.

Since my mourning, I had not seen my bathhouse again, nor this
peaceful and wild place where I had come for the last time
with Mina. I found it changed. The cove always has its beauty
sand, its shells, its sinuosities, and its belt of rocks
water flower. But the pretty mound that housed my cabin is leaving
eaten away by the high seas. A cedar has already fallen, and the two
vigorous pines whose shade I loved to see in the water, undermined by
the waves also lean towards the earth. It made me do
reflections whose sadness was not without sweetness. "A mountain
ends up crumbling in waves of dust, and a rock is finally
torn from its place. The sea digs the stones and consumes little by little
its shores. Those therefore who live in mud houses do not
will they not be consumed much sooner? "



July 25.

I like to get closer to the poor, the humble, that is to say
strong who so valiantly carry such heavy burdens. Often I
go to a poor woman who has no other resource than her
courage, to raise her three children. The unfortunate woman saw perish
her husband almost before her eyes.

The sea kept the body, but a few hours after the sinking, the
storm threw on the shore the debris of the boat with the oars
of the fisherman; and the widow crossed the oars across the beams,
above the black wooden cross that adorns the whitewashed wall
lime from his poor home.

This young woman inspires me with a singular interest. She never
complains, but we feel that she has suffered. For her the rude and
ceaseless work, privations of all kinds, is not this
that there is more to bear. But she accepts everything. "He
you have to win your paradise, ”she sometimes tells me.

There is something about that pale and gentle face that strengthens, that
uplift thoughts. How many unknown virtues will shine in broad daylight!
How many hidden magnitudes will be revealed in those whom the world
ignore or mistake?

One day Ignatius of Loyola asked Jesus Christ who, in the
moment, was the most agreeable to him on earth, and Our Lord
replied that it was a poor widow who earned, by spinning, her bread
and that of his children. My father found this trait charming, and
said: "When I see contempt for poverty, I am torn between
indignation and the urge to laugh. "



July 26.

For a long time, I stopped to look at the very fine sea high and
perfectly calm. It is as beautiful as the rest of a passionate heart.
To upset the sea you need a storm, but to upset the
heart, to the bottom, what is needed! ... Alas, a nothing, a shadow.
Sometimes everything acts on us, until the smoke that shakes in
air, to the leaf that the wind blows away. Where does this come from? don't
ain't it feeling like these powerful and dangerous fluids
that circulate everywhere, and whose nature remains so deep
mystery?

God does not give everyone keen and deep sensitivity. Nor the
pain, nor love goes before in many hearts, and time
y erases impressions as easily as the flood erases
footprints on the sand.

It is said that the deepest heart ends up exhausting itself. Is this
true? So that's a poor consolation. Nothing on earth has
never grew among the ashes ... the edges of the extinct volcano are
never sterile. Not a flower, not a moss will ever be seen there.
The snow can veil the dreadful nakedness of the mountain; but nothing
would embellish the life that a powerful flame has ravaged. These
ruins are sad: what the fire does not consume there, it blackens.



July 27.

A very well-meaning lady insisted on seeing me very much, and
wrote to me that she wouldn't want to leave without leaving me some
words of consolation. Poor woman! it makes me feel like
person, who, with a drop of fresh water on the tip of his finger,
thinks it could soften the bitterness of the sea.

Let me be left in peace!



July 28.

It is an amazing thing how my health is improving. My so strong
constitution takes over, and often I wonder with
dread, if I am not condemned to grow old - to grow old in
isolation of soul and heart. My courage fails before this
thought.

To distract myself, I take long walks every day.
I come back tired, which makes me enjoy the rest. But that he is
sad to live with a full heart in an empty house. O my father, the
day of your death, mourning has entered here forever. Sometimes I
thinking of traveling. But that would always go where no one would
waits. Besides, I couldn't get away from Valriant, where everything
recalls my past so sweet, so full, so sacred.

As much as possible I live outside. The countryside is in all its
magnificence, but it is maturity, and it looks like nature
feels the hour for counting. Already she collects herself, and
sometimes is saddened, like a beauty who sees youth flee and
who thinks of wrinkles and disfigurements.



August 2nd.

Today I went on a horseback ride. Now that my
forces allow me, I would like to resume my habits.
Besides, violent exercises calm and do good.

While riding this noble animal that my father loved, I had a terrible
weight on my heart, but the speed of the gallop made me dizzy. At
back I was tired, and I had to put my handsome Sultan in
not. Then the thoughts came to me sad and tender.

I wish I had written anything when my life looked like these
delicious spring days, where the air is so fresh, the greenery
so tender, the light so pure. I would have fun seeing these
pages. I would find there a scent of the past. Now the charm is
flew; I only see anything with eyes that have cried. But there is
memories of happiness that stubbornly come back like these wrecks
which float.



August 4.

Since my walk, my thoughts have flown in spite of myself towards La Malbaie.
I want to go there, and why? To review a
place where I almost killed myself. It's by the side of a path
stony, on the slope of a coast; there is a lot of
dogwood trees along the fence, and here and there a few
young alders that must have grown.

If Maurice passed by would he remember? And yet if I were
dead then, what emptiness, what mourning in her life and in her heart!

It was three years ago. Coming back from an excursion to Saguenay,
we had stopped at La Malbaie. My father, Maurice and I,
as comfortable on horseback as in an armchair, we did
long runs, and one day we drove to
Port-au-Persil, wild and charming place that is five or
six leagues from La Malbaie.

On our return, the storm surprised us. The rain was falling so hard that
Maurice and I decided to go find shelter somewhere,
and we were waiting for my father, whom we had anticipated, when
a sinister lightning burned our faces. Almost at the same time, the
thunder burst over our heads and fell on a tree, a few
not from me. Our terrified horses reared violently, I had no
not the strength to master mine - he left - it was a race
crazy, terrible. I was missing my breath, my ears were missing
buzzed dreadfully, I was dizzy. Yet through
the thunder rolls, I could make out the voice of Maurice
followed closely, and often shouted "Don't be afraid."

I was holding on, but at the bottom of a hill, at a bend in the road, my
horse suddenly swerved, turned around, jumped over a
big rock, and mad with terror resumed his course. Maurice had
jumped to the ground and waited. When I saw him soar I thought that
the horse was going to knock him down; but he seizes him by the nostrils and
stopped him dead. This moment of anguish had been horrible. My whole
force abandoned me, the reins escaped me, I fell.

Maurice was next to me with a leap. By a singular happiness,
I had fallen on brush that had cushioned my fall. I
had no pain. I was only a little dizzy.

My father was coming at full speed, mortally worried. He understood
all of a sudden and, in a silent transport, hugged us all
two in his arms.

O my God, you know, his first word was for you
thank! And the sweetness of this moment!

Broken with fatigue and emotion I was absolutely unable to
walk. The rain was still falling in torrents. My father took me away
like a feather and carried me to a nearby house, where we were
received with charming eagerness. I was wet to the bone;
and for fear of coldness, they made me change my clothes.
A young girl put all her dresses at my service. I took one of
white flannel. As she did not fit my size, the mistress
from here opened his chest and pulled out a pretty little blue shawl - his
wedding shawl - she said, adjusting it very carefully.

"You have adorned her beautiful," repeated the worthy woman over and over,
you had fallen on the stones, you were dead. ”

`` Yes disfigured for life, '' added the young girl, who had
seem to find it much more terrible.

--Is the gentleman who stopped your horse your rider,
she whispered in her ear?

My toilet finished, she presented me a small mirror, and asked me
naively if I was not happy to be so beautiful? - if I would have
could bear the misfortune of being disfigured?

As I left the room, I found my father and Maurice. Oh! this
beautiful light that there was in their eyes. Despite their clothes
disgusting water, both looked blessed.

The storm had ceased. The countryside cooled by the rain
shone in the sun. The dew sparkled on every strand
of grass, and hung from the trees in brilliant drops. The air,
delicious to breathe, brought us in puffs the healthy smell of
mown hay, and the aromatic scent of trees. Never nature
had never seemed so beautiful to me. Standing at the window, I looked moved,
dazzled. This immense and magnificent distance, where the dazzling sea
merged with the sky, appeared to me like the image of
the future.

"My God, I thought, how good it is to live!"

Sitting on a stepladder at my feet, Maurice looked at me, and well
low, I say to him: "Thank you".

A flame of joy passed fiery over his face, but he remained
quiet.

"See how beautiful it is," I said to him.

He smiled and replied in that Italian language that he
loved:

"Beatrice was looking at the sky, and I was looking at Beatrice."



August 7.

Near Pointe aux Cèdres, in a ravine without shade, without
greenery, without water, two young spouses came to settle. they have
bought and repaired, as best they could, a puny hovel that was falling
in ruins, and live there happily. Happiness is within us, and
who knows if the magic of love can not make, a poor
hut as pleasant as the cave of Calypso.

I often go through the ravine. I wear these new
married an interest of which they hardly suspect. This afternoon I
saw the young woman preparing her supper. When the weather is nice, three
stones arranged in a tripod, near his door, serve as
hearth, and a few dry branches are sufficient to cook the meal.
She is attractive, and wears her blond hair _to the Swiss_,
in heavy mats on the back. It's lovely to see her sitting on
a log in front of its humble fire, and watching its soup, while
actively knitting. I guess she doesn't have a clock because she
often asks the sun - oh charm of waiting! - I feel more
sad again when I see her. So would I want there to be no more
happy on earth? _Happy! _ Yes they are, because they have
love and it's all there.

I made them tell them to come and pick fruits and flowers,
as often as they like.



August 8.

Everyone went back to their bed, except my good old Monique, who
persists in believing that I need care, and turns a deaf ear
ear when I send him to bed. But she doesn't make more than
noise than a shadow. All around me is quiet. The scent of
strikes - that perfume that Maurice loving so much - comes to me penetrating and
harsh. Over there, on the silver waves, we see sparks running
of fire. But the sea is calm, strangely calm, and I cannot hear
nothing but the murmur of the stream, through the garden, and here
over there, the rustling of the leaves in the passing breeze.

Who has not felt his eyes wet before the deep calm of the
countryside half submerged in shadow? who did not lend an ear
charmed by these divine silences, by these vague and floating rumors of
the night?

My God, I would need to forget how beautiful the earth is

The day always distracts a little, but at night the soul opens everything
whole to reverie and when the heart is troubled, the imagination
spreads everywhere, with its flames waves of sadness. In vain
I try to look at the sky. It takes calm waters to
reflect beauty and my soul

  "Is no more than a dark wave where the sand has risen."



August 9.

In isolation, when the soul still has its entire sensitivity
and all alive, there is a strange pleasure in the memories which
tear the heart and make you cry. These dear memories of tenderness
and mourning, I surround myself with it, I envelop myself in it, I penetrate it, or
rather they are the very soul of my life.

This behavior is not wise, I know it; but who does not like the better
storm that dead calm - that terrible calm that knocks down, that destroys
the proudest courage.



August 15th.

I'm ashamed of myself. What have I done with my courage! what did I do
of my will?

Never, no never, I would have believed that the soul could overturn like this
in the nerves. I cannot remain at rest. I am perfectly
incapable of any work, of any application. Despite
I, my book and my work are slipping out of my hands. Everything moves me,
everything troubles me, and even in the presence of my servants,
burning tears escape from my eyes. O my father! than
would you think of me? you so noble! you so proud!

But I can't help it. As my strength returns, the need
to see him again awakens terrible in my heart. Prayer does not
brings me more than momentary relief, or rather I don't know
no longer to pray, I only know how to listen to my desperate heart.

Oh my God! excuse me. These passionate regrets, these devouring
sorrows are the foolish complaints of the land of trial. I do not
know how to prevent them from growing. O my God tear up and burn, I
ask you, I implore you. Ah, how many times during
terrible days that I just spent, haven't I been throwing myself to
your feet. I'm afraid of myself, and I spend whole hours
in the church.

O Lord Jesus, you know it is not you that I want, this
is not your love I thirst for, and even in your lovely
presence, my thoughts wander.

Yesterday there was a furious wind, a terrible storm. On your knees
in the church, my forehead hidden in my hands, I listened to the sound of
the sea less troubled than my heart. Deep in my soul
strange, savage sadnesses responded to the roars of
waves, on the lonely shore, and at times sobs
convulsives tore my chest.

The church was deserted. A humble tallow candle, lit by the
wife of a poor fisherman, burned on a long wooden candlestick,
in front of the image of the Virgin.

O Mary! extend your gentle hand to those whom the abyss wants to swallow up.
O virgin! O Mother! have mercy.



August 17.

If, once again, I could hear it, it seems to me that
I would have the strength to endure everything. His voice exercised over me a
delicious, wonderful power; and, alone, she could
to tear myself away from the despondency so close to death where I stayed
diving, after my father's funeral.

As long as I had had her adored face before my eyes, a force
mysterious had supported me. His hand, his dear hand, which had me
blessed, rested until the last moment in mine - she was
still lukewarm when I joined her to her left hand which held the
crucifix. In very bitter peace I kissed her face so
calm, so beautiful, and to obey him even in death, unceasingly I
repeated: "May the will of God be done!"

But when I saw nothing of him, not even his coffin,
the exaltation of the sacrifice fell. Without thoughts, without words, without
tears, unable to understand a thing and to bear even the
daylight, I spent the days and nights, lying on my
bed, all the shutters in my bedroom closed. While I was lying
in this depression which resisted everything, and no longer left
of hope, suddenly a voice rose soft like that of an angel.
Despite my state of extreme prostration, the song came to me, but
veiled, as from far away. And the funeral weight that was crushing me
raised; I revived at this song so tender, so penetrating.

In my darkened thoughts, it was the voice of the Christian who, from the bottom
from the tomb, sang her immortal tenderness and her
imperishable hopes; it was the voice of the chosen one who, from the
heaven, sang the recognitions and the divine joys of
consoled. This terrible silence of death, inexpressible suffering of
eternal absence, it seemed to me that my father's love had
conquered and how many times have I wanted to relive that hour. This
unforgettable hour, so strange and so sweet, when I came back to life,
rocked by a divine melody.

The song was still going on. I was listening as if the sky had passed
ajar and there came a moment when I would have succumbed, under the excess
emotion, without the tears that soothed my heart. They
flowed in abundance, and as they flowed, I felt
in me a very gentle appeasement.

--Maurice, Maurice, sobbed Mina, she is saved.

Then the day dawned in my mind; I understood, and then I
asked to see Maurice.

`` He will come, '' said the doctor, who held my hand in his,
will come, if you consent to drink this and let it give
light.

Despite the awful disgust, I swallowed what he presented to me. We opened
shutters, and I kept my face hidden in the pillows, to
not to see the sunlight which horrified me, because
my father would never see her again.

Maurice came, and on his knees beside my bed, he spoke to me, he said to me
of these words that today he would seek in vain. He begged me
to look at him, and I couldn't resist his desire.

--O my poor child! O my dear beloved! he moaned when he saw my
face.

His was burned with tears. Mina seemed to me as well changed. They
were both in great mourning, and I cannot refer to this
hour, without a feeling that makes me forget everything. Then I
felt our souls inexpressibly united. I felt loved - loved
with this infinite tenderness which makes the whole heart
is moved, opens up and flows. So I thought the pain
shared, it was a living force which forever mingled souls.

How many times, to relieve my sadness, has Maurice not
sung!

Now I'll never hear that lovely song again
made you forget the earth - this celestial song which consoled by making
cry.



August 18.

I dreamed that I heard him sing: "Your memory is still there"
and since .. oh madness! madness!

I am nothing to him. He no longer loves me; he won't love me anymore
never.

Yet when it came time to leave, to leave me forever, he got me
said: "Angeline, if you come back to this unjust, to this crazy woman
decision, you will only have to write it to me. Remember it."

No, I will not call him back! No doubt he would come, but we don't
not go to the altar crowned with withered roses.

To be loved as before or to be forever unhappy.



August 18.

I am always told that I should be distracted. _ Distract me! _
And how? Ah! one understands very little the excess of my misery. Life does
can be for me more than a dreadful loneliness, than a desert
appalling. What does the whole world do to me since I won't see it anymore
never?



20 August.

How a powerful feeling robs us, robs us of everything!
This is why well-directed love makes saints.

May God have mercy on me! It is very little to me, and it is
It is hard for the thought of his love to dispel my sadness for a moment.
For me, this thought is the fleeting lightning in the dark night.



21st of August.

I spent a long time looking at my portrait, and it
left in a violent state that humiliates me.

When I had beauty, I took care of it very little. The distance from
world, the virile education that I had received, had preserved me from
the vanity.

My father said that loving a person for their exterior is
like loving a book for its binding. When there was some death
in the neighborhood: "Come," he said to me, "come and see what we like,
when you love your body! ”

But so fragile, so fleeting as it is, isn't beauty
a great gift?



23 August.

Ah! the sadness of these walls. At times it seems to me that they
oozes sadness and cold. And yet I love this house
where I was so happy - dear house where mourning entered for
never!

"But woe to whom, in the calm of his heart, can desire to die
as long as there remains a sacrifice to make, needs to prevent,
tears to wipe away! "



August 24.

It is a strong wind accompanied by rain. All windows are
closed and alone in front of the fireplace,

  "I watch the fire which burns slowly,
  And I listen to the aquilon of the night roar. "

The voice of the sea dominates all the others. The big waves that
resound and approaching flood me with sadness.



August 25.

Putting some papers in order, I found a terrible sketch
of Maurice, who reminded me of one of the happiest hours of
my life.

How far away! These happy memories, when it comes to me, make me
the effect of those poor discolored leaves hanging from the trees,
forgotten by the autumn winds.



August 26.

What does Mina mean! I dare not go deeper into his words, or rather I have
always his letter in front of me, and I think about it constantly.
Does he think? No, I couldn't write it! And shouldn't I be there
expect! Isn't he free? Did I not give him back in spite of him his
word!

Who knows how far a man can push indifference and
forgetting?



(Angéline de Montbrun to Mina Darville)


Dear Mina,

I wanted to wait an hour of serenity to answer you but
that would take me too far. And besides, Marc, sick since
some time, would like you to be informed. "I saddled him
his horse many times, he said to me earlier, and I had so many
pleasure in doing errands. "

He loves to talk to you, and always ends up saying
philosophically: "Who would have thought that, that such a pretty
socialite make a nun? "

I am inclined to believe that he represented the nuns as having
always walked with downcast eyes, and always carried big
shawls, in any season. Your vocation has turned his ideas upside down.

Dear friend, you advise me to travel since my health
allows. I think about it a little sometimes, but really, I wouldn't know
tear me out of here. My heart has all its roots there. Besides, he
seems to me that regular, serious, sustained work is more secure
refuge than distractions. Unfortunately,
engaging occupations it is sometimes terribly difficult. But
as my father used to say, a firm will can do many things. Me,
I want to remain worthy of him. Do i need to tell you that i
take care of the unfortunate people a lot. And, great God! what would become of me
if misfortune did not make people love those who suffer? but there is
this superfluous tenderness I don't know what to do with.

Loneliness of the heart is the supreme test.

You are right, your brother's position is very sad. Born
is he not thinking of changing it? and who could blame him? Dear
sister of my tears, please believe in the best of my
heart, I wish he would forget and be happy.



August 28.

Why does the thought that he loves another upset me at this
point? So would I want him to condemn himself to a life of isolation and
sadness? Am I not unfair, unreasonable, to hold it
responsible for the involuntary change of his heart? change
that he would have liked to hide from all eyes - that he would have liked to hide
himself.

Poor Maurice! And yet he loved me! Wouldn't that be the
proof of a great poverty of heart, of always forgetting what
I received some, to think of what he could have given me more?



August 29.

Nothing is impossible with God. He could tear me away from this love that
made my torment.

Montalembert relates that his dear Saint Elisabeth prayed to God for
get rid of his extreme tenderness for his children. She was
answered and said: "My little children have become like
foreigners. "

But I will never say such a generous prayer. When I should
die - I want to love it.



August 30.

Yes, those were good days. Never the shadow of a doubt, never the
the slightest feeling of jealousy approached us, and whatever
In other words, security is essential to happiness. A lot I
know, do not judge so; but a worried and troubled love me
seems a miserable feeling. At least, it is a fruitful source of
pain and anxiety. I hate annoyances, suspicions,
coquetries, and all that torments the heart.

Maurice thought like me. The day before his departure for Europe, he
said to me - and with what nobility:

“I don't fear inconstancy or suspicion on your part. I believe
in you, and I know you believe in me. "

Yes, I believed in him. What haven't I always believed in? His word
given, it was proud and deep servitude; but he is sad
to have only ashes in his home.



August 31.

  "You call me your life, call me your soul,
  I want a name from you that lasts more than a day.
  Life is little, a breath extinguishes its flame.
  But the soul is immortal, as is our love. ”

So, he believed in his heart as in mine; he did not understand
that love could end. But this tenderness, which was believed
immortal, turned into pity, - and the pity of a man, - who
would like?

Besides, this sad remnant is not assured to me. Soon, that
will I be for him? An unwelcome thought, a painful memory, which
will come to disturb him in his happiness. _His happiness! _ No, he does
could be happy. He is free like a convict hanging around
the debris of his chain everywhere. The shadow of the past will rise over
all his joys, or rather, he could not have some that deserve this
last name. When we have received this great gift of deep sensitivity, we do not
can hardly stun, let alone forget. Don't tear off who wants
the past in his heart. We don't strip our memories like a
faded garment. No, it's Deianira's bloody robe,
attaches itself to the flesh and burns.



September 1st.

How I would like to see Mina!

It is eight o'clock. For her, the evening service has just ended and
here is the hour of rest. How calm is this life! What is sweet
compared to mine! Formerly, spoiled by happiness, I never
did not understand religious life, I did not understand that we could
to live thus, soul in heaven and body in the grave. Now I
believe the religious vocation a great happiness.

Her last day in the world, Mina wanted to spend it alone with
him and with me. What a day! We were all three
perfectly incapable of speaking. When the hour of his departure
approached, we had our last meal together or rather we
we sat down to table, for none of us ate. Then Mina made
all alone the tour of his dear house of the Remparts, then we
left. She wanted to enter the Basilica. The organ was playing, and we
sang the _Benedicite_, on a little coffin decorated with flowers. This
singing did me good. I felt that entering religion is like
the death of small children; heartbreaking to nature but, in the eyes of
faith, full of ineffable consolations and holy joys.

When we arrived at the Ursulines, there was no one there. Mina made me
walked under the porch, lifted my mourning veil, and looked at me
long time with deep attention.

--How you look like him! she said painfully.

She moved away a little, and turned towards the wall, she wept.
This weakness was short-lived. She came to us, pale but firm.

--I would have liked to stay with you until your wedding, she said
with effort; but it is beyond my strength.

She put our hands in hers and continued tenderly.

--You love each other, and the blood of Christ will unite you. Then,
addressing me:

--Do not demand of him a perfection that humanity does not include
hardly. Promise me to still love him and make him happy.

- Dear sister, I replied firmly, I promise you.

`` And you, Maurice, '' she continued, `` have all devotion to her,
all the tenderness. Remember he gave it to you! - And his
voice died away in a sob.

`` Woe to me if I ever forget it, '' said Maurice,
deep emotion.

She rang. Soon the keys creaked in the lock, and the
door opened with two leaves. Mina, pale as a dead woman,
kissed me strongly without saying a word. Her brother cried over
her, and held her for a long time in his arms.

`` Maurice, '' she said at last, `` I must. And tearing away from her
embrace, she crosses the threshold of the cloister and without
head, disappeared into the corridor.

The nuns said a few words of encouragement to us that I
hardly understood. Then the door rolled on its hinges, and closed with
a noise which I found sinister. With a horribly heavy heart, we
stay there.

--O my friend, Maurice said to me at last, I have only you.

This separation had affected him terribly. Better than anyone,
I understood the greatness of his sacrifice, and my heart was bleeding
for him. I offered him a walk, believing that
exercise would do him good. He sent his car back, and we took
the Grande-Allée. The cold was intense, the snow was screaming under our
not, but the sky was beautifully pure. Neither one nor the other, we
were unable to speak. Only, from time to time, Maurice me
asked if I wanted to go back, if I wasn't cold ... And he
put in the most banal attentions, something so
sweet, such tender solicitude that I was always charmed by it.

On the way back, we stopped at the Ursulines, to see Mina already
dressed as a postulant, and remained charming, despite the headdress
white and the skillet tail. She cried like us. Grates
made a very painful impression on me, and yet this
half-separation seemed sweet to me, when I thought of my father that
I would never see, I would never hear who was there
close by, lying underground. Several years ago, in
this same Ursuline parlor, with what pain, with what
tears, I had said goodbye to him for a few months. All these
memories came back to me and tore my heart. "Now
I thought, I know what separation is. "

That evening I made a great effort to overcome my sadness and
comfort Maurice. Sitting on the ottoman, we were left
still in my aunt's living room, we talked for a long time.
The expression so sad and so tender in his eyes is still to me
present.

So I knew my existence was profoundly changed - that
I couldn't be happy anymore - because deep down
heart, I had a wound that would never heal. But I believed
to his love, and it was still so sweet!



September 2.

My old Marc is still weak. I found him sitting in front of his
window, and looking at the cemetery whose tall grass waved
in the wind:

"My parents are here, he told me, and soon I'll be lying there
myself."

These words moved me. When we put in what we liked the most,
the heart inclines so naturally to the earth. All we will go
to live in the _tight house_, and, in the meantime, could we not have
patience? The longest life hardly lasts. _Yesterday child and
tomorrow old man! _ said Silvio Pellico. This frightening leak of
our joys and our pains should make resignation good
easy. _O my ten years of chains, how quickly you have passed! _
said the immortal prisoner again.

Poor Silvio! who has not wept over him? His book so simple and so
true leaves one of those impressions that nothing erases, because the most
irresistible of our feelings is admiration joined to pity.

By putting _Mio Pigrioni_ in my hands, my father said to me "Book
admirable who learns to suffer. " Learning to suffer is what
which remains to me.

According to Charles Sainte-Foi, a good book should always form a
real link between the one who writes it and the one who reads it. I love
this word of which I had felt the truth, long before I could
realize this, and, writers worthy of the name, it is not
the glory I would envy, but the sympathies they inspire.



September 3.

When I pass through the fields, I cannot help envying the
reapers bent under the weight of the day and the heat. I see some,
oblivious of their fatigue sharpening their scythes, singing. that
this rough life is healthy! I love this strong breed of workers
that my father loved.

Often I think with admiration of his busy, laborious life.
Rich as he was, who other than himself would have submitted to such a
energetic work! But he hated all softness, and
believed that a hard life is useful for the health of soul and body.

Besides, he enjoyed the beauties of the countryside like an artist.
"No," he would say sometimes, "one cannot entertain thoughts
low, when working under such a beautiful sky. "

O my father, I am your very unworthy daughter, but
the less I know how to say: "No, I will not entertain thoughts of
despair under this beautiful sky. ”



September 4.

It was there in this delicious solitude that he told me for the
first time: "I love you".

I like You! involuntary cry of his heart, which disturbed the
mine.

My father, Mina, Maurice and I all had a soft spot for this
lonely and charming place. How many times we have been there
together. These beautiful walnut trees have heard many bursts of laughter.
Now my father is in his grave, Mina in his cloister, and I
alive, Maurice will never return! He said of this beautiful
moss that one should be ashamed of walking there, than treading on the flowers
hiding there is an insult to beauty.

Tonight everything was delightfully cool and calm around the pond.
Not the slightest wind in the trees; not a ripple on these waters
transparent, glazed with pink. Lying on the moss, I left
float my thoughts, but I felt nothing, nothing but weariness
deep of the soul.



September 5.

Poor madness that I am! I reread his letters, and all this on
my soul is the living flame on the withered grass.



September 6.

Why regret his love so much? "My daughter, said the old man
missionary in Atala, it would be as well to cry a dream.
Do you know the heart of man, and could you count the
inconstancy of his desire? You would rather calculate the number of
waves that the sea travels in a storm? "



September 8.

How we remain a child! Since yesterday I am mad with regrets, mad
grief. And why? Because the wind has knocked over the ash tree under
which Maurice used to go and sit down with his books.
I loved this tree which had sheltered it so often, while it
loved me like a woman dreams of being loved. How many times is there
not leaning his pale brown head! "By its nature, love is
dreamer, ”he would sometimes say to me.

This place on the coast, from which one overlooks the sea, pleased him
infinitely, and the sound of the waves enchanted him. Also he spent there
often long hours. He had removed a few inches of
the bark of the ash tree, and engraved on the wood, between our initials, this
verse from Dante:

  _Amor chi a nullo amato amar perdona._

Bitter derision now! and yet these words kept for me
a scent of the past. I would have given many things to keep
this tree consecrated by his memory. The last time I
approached, a large spider was spinning its web, on the characters
that his hand engraved, and it made me cry. I thought I saw
hideous indifference working in the veil of oblivion. I removed the
canvas, but which will raise the fallen tree, - overturned in all its
strength, in all its sap?

The heart is taken to everything, and I cannot say what I feel,
looking at the coast where I can no longer see this beautiful tree, this witness of
past. I had the inscription removed. Cowardice, but what to do about it?

Meanwhile, he may be very busy with another.



September 10.

My aunt writes to me that he is about to be distracted.

These words made me perfectly miserable. Why not me
tell the whole truth? Why make me ask for it? No I do not
will not stand this uncertainty.

My God, what has become of the time when I served you in the joy of
my heart? Happy days of my childhood what became of you?

So work and play took up all my hours. Then I
loved only God and my father. These were really happy days.

O peace of soul! O blessed ignorance of the troubles of the heart, where
you are no longer happiness is not.



September 11th.

I work a lot for the poor. When my hands are like this
busy, it seems to me that God forgives me the bitterness of my
thoughts, and I better control my sorrows.

But today, I forgot myself on the strike. Standing in
the angle of a rock, my forehead resting on my hands, I cried
freely, without constraint, and I would have cried for a long time without this
sound of the waves that seemed to tell me: Life is flowing. Every stream
take away a moment.

Deep misery! I need the thought of death to endure the
life. And am I more to be pitied than many others? I spent
by such beautiful, gentle paths, and on earth, there are so many
who never knew happiness, who never felt joy
lively.

So many lives terribly overwhelmed, horribly missed.

How many vegetate without sympathy, without affection, without
memories! Among these, there are some who would have liked with
delight, but the circumstances were contrary to them. It their
had to live with vulgar, mediocre natures, also
unable to inspire and feel love.

How many are there who love as they would like to love, who are
loved as they would like to be? Infinitely few. I had this
happiness so rare, so great, I lived an ideal, intense life. And
this divine joy, I atone for it with terrible sorrows,
inexpressible pain.



September 13.

A haemorrhage in the lungs suddenly put poor Marc in a
great danger.

I found him lying on his bed, very weak, very pale, but
not appearing to be in much pain. "I'm leaving, my dear little one
mistress, ”he told me sadly.

The doctor intervened to prevent him from speaking. "It's good," he said,
I will not say anything more, but let me read the Passion of
Our Lord. "

He closed his eyes and put his hands together to listen to the reading.
The condition of this faithful servant affected me appreciably, but I did not
could help but envy his calm.

While preparing the table that was to serve as an altar, I
often watched, and I thought about what my father told me about
tremendous fear that my mother felt when she saw herself,
young and alive, in the hands of death. His love, his
happiness weighed on him like remorse.

"I was too happy," she said, crying, "the sky is not
for those. "

But when she had received communion, her fears vanished. "He has
suffered for me, she repeated, kissing her crucifix. "

My father was always moved by this memory. He recommended me
to thank Our Lord for what he had so perfectly
reassured, so tenderly consoled my poor young mother at her time
last. "I," he said, "could do nothing for her."

Horrible helplessness, which I in turn felt. When he was dying
before my eyes, what could I do? Nothing ... to add to his overwhelming
and his anxieties. But when he heard that his time had come, he
demanded his viaticum, and the conqueror of death came to soften his
terrible passage. He came to sleep her with the words of life
eternal. May he be blessed forever, eternally blessed!

Peace, says the priest when he enters with the Blessed Sacrament, peace to
this house and all who live there!

I am therefore included in this divine wish that the church has retained from
Jesus Christ. Ah! the peace! I would go look for her in the desert on
deeper, in the most arid solitude.

This morning, half hidden in the shadows, I witnessed everything, and like
I bowed down to adore the Blessed Sacrament, it spread
in my heart a faith so lively, so sensitive. I seemed to feel
on me the gaze of Our Lord and since ...

O master of the blood sacrifice! I understood you. You want that
the idols crumble before you. But am I not enough
unhappy? Have I not suffered enough? Oh! let me love it
in tears, in pain. Don't order the impossible
sacrifice, or rather Almighty Lord, Savior of man
whole, this feeling in which I had put everything, sanctify it that it
rise up like a flame, and leave nothing there that is
domain of death._



September 15.

Marc died yesterday. The day before he seemed better. We had a
fairly long interview together. He reminded me of my childhood, my beautiful
pony of which he was as proud as me.

His old coachman's heart revived at these memories. We were
almost cheerful - at least I tried to sound so - but when I
told him about his recovery, he stopped me with a sad
smile, and naively asked me: "Do you have something to him
say? ”

This word made me cry, and I answered with enthusiasm: "Tell him
that I love him more than before. Tell him to have mercy on her
poor daughter!"

He squeezed my hands between his callused hands, and continued calmly:
"My dear little mistress, I know that the earth seems to you too
empty as an eggshell, I know life looks good to you
tough. But believe me, it's a matter of a moment. Life passes
like a dream."

Poor Marc! his is over. I assisted him until the end.
No, God did not make death - death that separates - death if
terrible even to those who hope and believe.



September 18.

It's finish. I will no longer see this humble friend, this honest face that
I find in the haze of my memories. I watched over him
religiously, as he had done for my parents, as he
would have done it for myself, and now I say with all my heart
with the church: May he rest in peace!

Oh! how deep is this peace of the coffin; how she attracts
hearts tired of suffering. And yet death remains terrible
to see opposite!

These agonies of agony, this horror-filled separation

"It is death which clothes us with all things, but, as adds
Saint Paul, "we would like to be clothed on top," and the
stripping of our mortality, this dissolution of part of
we ourselves remain the great punishment of sin.

Ah! even if the Church wouldn't say anything, my heart would teach me
that Jesus Christ did not abandon his mother, to the corruption of
tomb.

O God, what should I not have done to save my father! But he
The sentence must be carried out, we must turn to dust. And
yet despite the sadness of the grave, this is where my thoughts
takes refuge and rests there on the "bed prepared in the
darkness ”- where everyone takes their place.

"Homeland of my brothers and my relatives, my words about you are
words of peace. ”



(Angéline de Montbrun to Mina Darville)


Dear Mina,

Again the great lesson of death. Poor Marc has left us.
It's a void. He was from the house before me. I loved to see
this respectable good head who had whitewashed in the service of my
dad.

You remember that when he died he never wanted to take any
rest. I thought of it while assisting him; I saw him again with red eyes
of tears, and the rosary in her rough hand.

You wouldn't believe, like those candles that burned, those prayers
recited around me, brought me back to our day before if
painful, so sacred. Dear sister, I am accused of having refused to
any distraction, and yet I made great efforts. But
when I was trying to get back to life, to be interested in something
thing, this murmur of the prayers recited around his coffin
invariably returned and made me deaf to everything.

What could I do to lift the weight of sadness that
crushed me? I would just as well have moved back a mountain with the
hand.

No, I don't think I have much to reproach myself with. God got me
do this grace never to murmur against his holy will.
May he be blessed!

Someday I hope from the bottom of my heart I'll thank him
of all. On his deathbed, my faithful servant thanked God
to have given birth to him and to live poor.

And is there not also a blessed poverty of heart,
does he not also have a detachment that is better than all
tenderness? But it is the death of nature; and, in front of that one
as in front of the other, everything in us revolts.

Surely, Mina, you have not forgotten the poor _Gris_ whose Marc
was so proud. Did we laugh, when you always started over
ask him about the famous trip that he so willingly and
with so much art! The _Gris_ is very crippled now, which
had not diminished Marc's tenderness. On the day of his death, he
had him brought to the window, and it was touching to see him
to be moved by the poor horse, which he called "his old man
companion ”.

My friend, I cannot blame your brother for trying to get
distract. He must be in dire need of it. Poor Maurice! But to
wind the clouds dissipate.

Did I tell you that Marc recommended himself to your memory? I you
admits that by accompanying him to the cemetery, I would have liked to see
open for me the doors of this asylum of peace, but it is
not here that I will sleep my sleep. It's in your church, everything
near you and next to him.

In the meantime, we must live, and I am not a little worried about it. My
solitary meals are a harsh penance to me. Yours to me
would also seem very long. Being in a row, everything
around a large refectory, it is terribly monastic. That he
Gone are the days when we ate together the blessed bread of
gaiety!

Your sister,

Angeline.



September 19.

Tomorrow ... the third anniversary of his death.

_I believe in the communion of saints, I believe in the resurrection of
flesh, I believe in eternal life ._ I believe, but this darkness
that cover the other life are very deep.

When I came back here, when I crossed this threshold where _ his body_
had just passed, I felt that mourning had entered here for
never. But then a wonderful force was supporting me.

Oh! grace, the mighty grace of God.

No doubt, the pain of separation was there terrible and all
lively. This black dress that Mina made me put on ... I never had
worn in black, and a terrible shiver shook me all. This cold of
death and sepulcher, which ran through all my veins,
left a horrible memory. But deep in my soul I was strong
I was calm, and with what ardor I offered to suffer all
that he owed to divine justice! ...

How many times then have I repeated this prayer!
When boredom drove me crazy, I had a kind of
consolation to offer me so that he was happy.

But our sacrifices are always miserable, and very unworthy of
God. Blessed be the divine condescension of Jesus Christ who
supplied by his for all our inadequacies. Adorable goodness!
How does he deign to hear me when I say: For him! for him!

O my God, be blessed! All the days of my life I will pray for my
dad. Better than anyone, yet I knew his soul. I know
that under a charming exterior he concealed admirable virtues and
austere renouncements. I know his proud conscience does
did not compromise with duty. For him, _the bewitchment of
bagatelle_ did not exist; he had nothing of that spirit of the world
that Jesus Christ cursed, and he had all the pride, all
the delicacies of a Christian. But what do we know about the adorable
purity of God?

However regulated it may be, a fiery heart remains immoderate. He is so
easy to go too far, by training, by intoxication. Born
has he not loved me too much? Many times I've wondered about it with
sadness.

But I know with what deep submission he accepted the will
of God who separated us. Then - oh supreme consolation! - he died
in the arms of the Holy Church, and it is with this mother
immortal that I say every day:

"Give him the sorrows he may have deserved, and like true faith
associated him with your faithful on earth, may your divine mercy
associates it with the choirs of angels. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. ”



September 22.

It's a crazy wind. The sea is white with foam. I like to see her
troubled to the depths of its abysses. And why? Is this
because the sea is the most beautiful of the works of God? Is not it
rather because it is the living image of our heart? One and
the other have the formidable depth, the terrible power of
storms, and as troubled as they are ...

What does the storm pluck from the depths of the sea?
what does passion reveal about our heart?

The sea preserves its riches, and the heart preserves its treasures. He ... not
do not know how to speak the word of life; he does not know how to say the word of
love, and all the efforts of passion are like those of
the storm which tears away from the abyss, only these weak debris, these
light algae that can be seen on the sands and on the rocks,
mixed with a little foam.



September 25.

I have resumed the habit of having people read. When I read myself I
stop me too often, which is no good.

History distracts me more effectively than all the others
readings. I forget myself in front of this rapid flowing river of ages
so much pain.

Today I had Garneau read. Often my father and I
read together. “O my daughter,” he used to say to me sometimes,
miserable we would be, if we weren't proud of our
ancestors!" He was enthusiastic about these fine feats of arms, and
his enthusiasm won me over.

Now I know the nothingness of many things. So much ardor
extinct in my very dead heart!

But the love of the fatherland always lives deep, deep
of my bowels. Happy are those who can devote themselves, sacrifice themselves
for a great cause. The ground is a beautiful bed to die
sacred of the fatherland.

My mother's great-grandfather was fatally injured on the
Plains, and my father's remained on the battlefield of
Sainte-Foy with his two sons, the eldest of whom was not sixteen.

I have never complained about those. But I pained the
chivalrous Lévis (my cousin from afar). Many times I
saw him, gloomy and proud, ordering the flags to be destroyed. This
Quebec City, which he wanted to burn if he could not keep it
to France_, I never see her again without thinking of him, and before
harbor so beautiful, I have often thought of her deadly anguish when,
the day after Sainte-Foy's victory, the approach of the
vessels. But the white flag was no longer to fly on the
Saint-Laurent, and, for our fathers, all was lost _fors honor._

This spring of 1760, Madame de Montbrun plowed her land herself,
to be able to give bread to his little orphans. Valiant woman!

I like to imagine her proudly supping on a piece of bread
black, his hard day's over. I have a letter from her written after the
assignment, and found among old family papers, on which
my father had managed to get hold of it during his trip to France.
It's a proud letter.

"They donated all the blood in their veins," she said, speaking of
her husband and her sons, I have given that of my heart; I have
shed all my tears. But what's sad is knowing the
lost country. "

The noble woman was wrong. As the Chevalier de Lorimier used to say,
the day before going up on the scaffold: "Blood and tears shed
on the altar of the fatherland are a source of life for the peoples ”,
and Canada will live. Ah! I hope.

Despite everything, did our ancestors not keep from their noble mother,
language, honor and faith.

My father loved to look back on our memories of mourning and glory.
For Garneau, who brought so much heroism to light, he had a
deep gratitude, and he would have liked to see his portrait in
all Canadian families.

This respected portrait is there in its old place. Sometimes I
stop considering it. Who knows, said Crémazie, by how many
pains consists of a glory? Touching thought, and, as to
Garneau so true!

To do what he did, you have to go to the end of your strength,
which requires a lot of bloody efforts. Ah! I understand that. Without
doubt, I can not help it, but I love my country, and I would like
my country loved him who has done so much for the honor of our name.
I hope that instead of plunging into the shadows, the glory of Garneau
will go rising. And didn't he deserve it? Stranger to pleasures,
without personal ambition, this admirable man thought only of his
country.

He loved her with boundless love, and this love filled with fear,
marked with sadness, has always touched me singularly.
Moreover, he has proven it to the point of heroism. In this century
of abasement, Garneau had ancient grandeur.

It's one of my regrets that I didn't know him, that I didn't have him
never seen. But I thought about him a lot, about his difficulties though
tall, to his lonely upbringing and with respect I would see this
attic where, without masters and almost without books, our historian
was working on training.

Oh! how brave he was! how persevering! and how many
once I was moved, thinking of that dim light that
stayed up so late, and would shed light on our glorious past.

But he finished his laborious task. Now _long is his night ._
I visited his grave at Belmont cemetery. So I never had
shed bitter tears, and my lively youth was astonished and
disturbed the calm of the tombs; but in front of the monument of our
historian, the generous blood of my ancestors flowed warmer in
my veins.

I remember I stayed there for a long time. Child still by many
sides, however, I was not without having benefited from the education
that I had received. Already, I had a deep feeling of honor
national, and, like the one who bids Garneau the supreme farewell to the
of the motherland, I would have liked to assure him
immortal of all Canadians.

  He forever erased the months of the conquered race,
    of vanquished people.
  He was a man of courage, of heroic perseverance,
    of disinterestedness, of sacrifice.
  May he rest on the battlefield he celebrated,
    not far from the heroes he raised from oblivion!

And we, God take care to give ourselves as to our fathers, with the
so French feeling of honor, the exaltation of devotion, the
madness of sacrifice, which make heroes and saints.



September 28.

Delicious evening. I like these

  "....... nights that look like day,
  With less clarity, but with more love, "

and if a joy of the earth should still make my heart beat, I
wish it were on a night like this, in this beautiful garden
where the peaceful light of the moon sleeps.

I spent almost the entire evening on the balcony, and gladly
I would still be there.

But these contemplations are not good for me. My youth there
awakens ardent and very lively. Nature is never for us
that a reflection, that an echo of our intimate life, and this moist
transparency of beautiful nights, these perfumes, these whispers that
rise on all sides confuse me.

But now, as if she had guessed my crazy thoughts, my little one
reader, who was spinning alone in her room, began to sing:

  "This low stay is only a pilgrimage."

This sweet song of a simple child refreshed my soul.

  "I believe. Deep in my heart, hope remains to me:
  “I am only a guest here for a moment.
  "To the desires of my heart if the earth is fatal,
  "I will have fewer regrets tomorrow when I leave her."

Among Mlle Désileux's books, I found a booklet whose
almost all the leaves are torn off, and which brings to
inside: "My God, may your love consume my faults, like the
fire has just consumed the expression of my cowardly regrets. "

Poor daughter! she too had a confidant. I will do like her
before dying.

What does she think of her long martyrdom, now that God _himself
wiped away her tears? _ I love these tender words of Scripture, and
so many others full of mystery.

What is this light, this peace that we ask for those
who _ have preceded us? _

What is this _joy from the Lord_, where we will all go, and
that the human soul, yet so great, could not contain?

What is this love of which our most ardent tenderness is not
what a shadow so pale?

It is certain that despite the infinity of our desires and the lovely
perspectives that faith reveals to us, we have no idea of ​​the
sky. And in this our efforts do not serve us much. We
we are like someone who, having never seen a leaf,
would like to imagine a forest, or which, having never seen one
drop of water, would like to imagine the ocean.



October 1st.

“Lord,” said the poor Samaritan woman, “give me this water,
so that I won't be thirsty anymore. "

Deep word! my tears flowed hot and abundant on the
sacred book. What a castaway's thirst can compare to my need
to love?

Since this morning, I have always had in mind this delicious
scene from the Gospel. Sometimes I took the illustrated bible for it
look for Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

And as it took me back to the blessed days of my childhood, when
on my father's lap, I looked at these beautiful engravings that
I loved so much! I remember that I was angry with the Samaritan woman who
did not give Our Lord a drink.

"If you knew the gift of God and the one who asks you to
to drink!"

And, my God, this need to love which increases with all our disappointments,
of all our sorrows, of all our pains, is it so
difficult to understand that he will never have his satisfaction on the
Earth?

No, God has not made his place in our soul in vain. The mighty
grace of baptism does not stay there so long without digging
abysses. From there come these aspirations to which nothing answers
here below and those mysterious sadnesses that happiness itself
awakens deep in our heart.

Maurice said: "By nature love is a dreamer." It is very true
But why does he dream, if not because the present, the real
is never enough?



October 2.

However, as the _charm of feeling_ entails.

He doesn't love me anymore, I know it, but fool that I am, I tell myself
always: "He loved me."

Yes, he loved me, and how he will never love.

Usually little talker, Maurice was almost always on the
forehead, as on the mind, a slight haze of sadness. Even before
my misfortune, often looking at me, his eyes filled with
tears.

This expression of tenderness and melancholy was his great
charm. His sensibility so lively was much more communicative
that expansive. He said he needed the music to leave
speak his soul. But then, with what power his soul is
revealed.

It's finish! I will no longer hear his voice! Her voice so sweet, so
penetrating, so expressive!



October 4.

"The leper closed the door and pushed the bolts."

Terrible loneliness! what we feel deeply is always
new, and reading the _Leprous_ left an impression
terrible. But I will come back to that. Since I have to cry, I
would like to cry over others than me.

O selfishness! the personality!

When the future appears too horrible we must think of those who are
more unhappy than oneself. In recent days, I often ask
map of Siberia, and I let my thoughts go to these
frozen solitudes.

How many Poles guilty of having loved their homeland are there.
And who will say their sorrows? the sadness of the patriot! the
sorrows of the exile! the sorrows of man to the last degree
of misfortune!

Ah! these wretches, treated worse than beasts of burden, this
it would be up to them to curse life. Yet they cannot without
crime and this existence, of which no word can tell
horror, remains an immense benefit because it can deserve them
the sky. What then is the sky!

My God! give me faith, faith in my future happiness; and these
unfortunate people! Lord, innocent or guilty, aren't they your
children? Ah! keep them from blasphemy, keep them from despair, this
supreme woe.

That no thought of hatred, that no doubt of your justice,
may no distrust of your adorable goodness ever reach their
hearts. Send divine hope! let her lift their chains,
may she half open the vaults of their hell.



October 6.

Earlier, I heard a passer-by humming:

  "May the day last for me,
  Gone away from you! etc. ”

It was Maurice who popularized here this melancholy song to which
her voice gave such a penetrating charm.

All our echoes have repeated it. So he didn't know how to live far from
me. And I - poor fool - I just counted the days gone by
since our separation.

That he is already far this evening, where decided not to see him again, I
say before tackling the inevitable explanation:

"Maurice, sing to me something like in the days of happiness."

He blushed, and I suffered from his embarrassment. Ah! happy days
were far away.

Without saying anything, he went to take a guitar (his accompaniment of
predilection), and came back to sit next to me. Then after having a
little dreamed of, he began:

  "Proud Ocean, valleys, etc."

We were alone, I dropped the work I had taken by
countenance, and I listened.

This song, my father loved and often asked him. The last
once I had heard it, it was in our delicious garden of
Valriant.

As the past returns at times, like the past, like the
land return what they took!

But the pain of separation was there, heartbreaking.

I had been too sick not to be very weak yet, and here we are
perhaps why until then, the thought of his indifference
had not caused me severe pain. No doubt this thought does not
didn't leave, but what I usually felt was the
feeling of deep discouragement, utter misery - what
must experience the incurable patient who knows that by bringing together all
his strength, he can only turn around on his bed of pain.

But to make up my mind to break up with him, it took an effort
terrible that had revived me - and this strange emotion that caused me
his voice.

I knew I was hearing it for the last time. Yet I
remained calm.

I was way below tears, and after he had stopped
sing, I remember we exchanged a few words
indifferent to the wind, to the rain beating the windows. he
then remained silent watching the fire that burned in the
fireplace; I found him looking bored. Ah! the heart so rich
of love, of ardent flame, was indeed dead.

I used to watch it over and over, and I saw
perfectly how life seemed to him arid, discolored. I
saw it all, but in my heart there was no more bitterness
against him. He had never been to me what he was to me in this
moment. As I felt the depth of my attachment as I
could see what life would be like without him!

However, it was necessary to end it, and with a firm hand, I held
this _ring of faith_ which had been burning me since he no longer loved me,
and that I was fully resolved to force him to take it back.

Oh! how could I have survived that hour! how could I
resist his reproaches, his supplications? he had so well
the accent of the past. For a moment, I thought I was still loved: the emotion
surprise had warmed his heart. "What have I done?"
he sobbed.

The great crime against love is not to give it back.

No, he didn't love me anymore; but the flame rekindles a moment before
to go out altogether. Then he was humbled in his loyalty,
and did not have that fierce selfishness that makes most men so
indifferent to the misfortune of others.



October 7.

Alone! ... Alone ... forever

Ah! I would like to think of heaven. But I can't. I'm like this
sick woman of whom the Gospel speaks, who was all bowed down and
could look up.



October 9.

_The weight of life! _ Now I understand this word.

I don't know anything harder to bear than heavy boredom
that takes hold of me so often. It's a terrible weariness, it's
a despondency, a nameless disgust, a savage insensitivity. My
poor soul sees itself alone in a dreadful void.

But I no longer let myself be completely dominated by boredom. I have
resumed the habit of work and I will keep it.

What will become of me without _saint handwork_, as they say
monastic constitutions, the only one that is possible for me
often.



October 11.

Delicious time. I walked for a long time on the shore.

These fishermen's fires are lovely to see from a distance, but I
cannot bear the sight of the shore at low tide. How gray!
how dull! how sad! I seem to see this boredom
which makes the bottom of the life, or rather it seems to me to see a life
from where love has withdrawn.

Always that thought!

May God forgive me for this madness which believes it is all lost when
rest.

I would like to forget the pretenses of love, I would like to forget the
pretense of happiness, and think no more about it than most
men do not think of heaven and of the infinite love that awaits them. But,
O misery! I can not.

And yet, Lord Jesus, I believe in your love adorably
inexpressible. I believe in the bloody proof that you got me
data; I know your grace gives strength to all
sacrifices she asks for, and deep in my heart ...
weight of the cross fully accepted that left me this
delicious bruise?

I believe in the joys of sacrifice, I believe in the joys of pain.



(The missionary PS ***, to Angéline de Montbrun)


Miss,

Your generous dedication came on time. According to your
desire, we and our neophytes, we will pray for your
dad. As for me, I could not forget, that after God, I owe him
honor of the priesthood, but for a long time it has been the action of
graces that dominate in the memory that I give her every day to
the altar.

Could the thought of his happiness not soften your
sadness? Why always look at the grave instead of looking
the sky? Why see him where he isn't?

  "Dust, you're nothing! ash, you are not it
  That we cherished;
  You are only a garment disdained by his master,
  And just a withered flap. "

Tell me, isn't loving someone putting their bliss in it
his? Why are you mourning him?

Poor child! I understand your weakness. I, who was only
his protégé, I couldn't help but admire and cherish him.

You know that upon learning of the fatal accident, I made a wish, if he
lived, to devote myself to the harsh missions of the north. And i love you
to say it, that same evening of September 20, kneeling in the church of
Valriant, I complained to God who had not accepted my
sacrifice.

I complained and I cried, waiting for the dawn to allow me
to start the mass that I wanted to offer my
benefactor So what happened in my soul? What a light
heaven suddenly enveloped me in this semi-darkness of the sanctuary,
where a few days before I had received the priestly anointing? I
could not say it; but consoled, I took the oath to Our Lord
solemn to use my life among the poor savages.

You ask me how I endure this terrible life. Nature
suffers; but alongside the sacrifices there are the joys of the apostolate.
When I arrived here I was already fluent in two wild languages ​​and
I was sent to the Chippeways.

There, I confess, many cowardly regrets came to assail me.
But Our Lord had pity on his unworthy priest. He led me
with a young patient who was waiting for baptism to die.

I say _ waited_ and that's the word, because for several weeks,
his life seemed a miracle; and it is not possible to say with
how easily this very simple soul heard the word of salvation.
_Bienheureux_, yes _bienheureux the pure hearts ._ If you had seen
the expression on her dying face when she saw the crucifix!

I baptized her with one of those joys that leave the heart hurt.
O cold joys of the flesh! O poor happiness of the earth,
how happy the priest is to have sacrificed you! What tears
I poured into this miserable hut! If you had seen her, like
she was after her death, lying on a few fir branches,
her virgin forehead still wet with the water of baptism, and the crucifix
in his clasped hands!

I make sure that this happy predestined one will be a protector to you
in heaven because she promised it to me and even I gave her your
last name.

And now, Mademoiselle, will you allow, not to
man, but to the priest, to the poor missionary to tell you what
do you need to hear?

In your letter I saw many things that are not there.
Tell me, why are you so sad, so unhappy and most of all
so upset? Isn't it because you will keep crying
on those fiery traces that love has left in your life?

You say consolation will never touch your skin
heart; you say there is no more peace for you. My child, the
consolation urges you on all sides since you are
Christian, and Our Lord brought peace to all the souls of
good will. Ah! if you were generous! If you had the courage
to sacrifice all the softening reveries, all the dangerous ones
memories! Soon you would have peace, and, despite your sadness,
you would see the consolations of faith rise in your soul,
radiant and numberless, like the stars in serene nights.

Be sure of it, the delicacy of a passion does not remove its danger;
on the contrary, it is one more seduction for the unhappy soul who
surrenders to it. You will tell me that we are weak against our hearts. Yes,
it is true. But according to Saint Augustine, virtue is order in
love. Think about it, and ask God to draw your heart.

No, he didn't make you to suffer. If he destroyed your
happiness is that happiness was not good to you; if he annihilated
your hopes are that you expected too little.

Tell me, despite, or rather because of his deep tenderness, your
was not father severe with you at need? Let God do it
our education for eternity. When it opens for us in
its infinite depth, which the years spent on
Earth...

You know, the painful hours like the drunken hours,
everything goes - and with what wonderful speed! - It seems to me that
it was yesterday that I was quite embarrassed to wait for your father on
the road to Valriant, to ask him to put me in college _because
that I wanted to be a priest.

The future will disappear like the past. The future, the real future,
it is the sky. Ah! if we had faith.

In the heyday of the Church, to be a Christian was to know
suffer. How many young girls among the martyrs! You the
picture yourself weeping for the happiness of the earth and the sweets of
life? We too are Christians, but as said
Our Lord: "When the Son of man returns to earth,
do you think he still finds faith there? " O painful word!
And why, however degenerate we are, we understand that the
martyrdom is supreme grace, and we would not dare compare any
pleasure of the earth to that of the Christian who for Jesus Christ,
surrenders to torments.

My child, you know, there is also a martyrdom of the heart. Yes,
Bless God, there are lives that are continual death.
No doubt you are weak, exhausted, tired of suffering, but
do you know what name our poor savages give to the Eucharist?
they call it _ what makes the heart strong._

My God! what sustains the missionary against power
regrets and memories? In its terrible isolation, in the middle
of miseries and inconveniences without number, what defends him
against visions of homeland and home?

We too are weak, and if we stand firm,
it is, as Saint Paul says, _because of him who loved us.
You can be sure, communion consoles everything. What did I say? "My friend,
wrote a missionary, who has since received the crown of martyrdom,
to receive communion is always a great happiness; but to commune in a
dungeon, when we wear the iron collar with the heavy chain, and
that we saw tear his body with mud, it is a happiness that cannot
speak out."

Do not doubt it. Jesus Christ can sweeten everything; it's a
enchanting! He came to bring fire to the earth. May he
light it up in your heart! Love is the great joy, and I you
want happy.

Yes, God will hear us. Every day our neophytes pray for
you with the fervor of the virginity of faith, and your father has
carried away in her heart in paradise.

Rejoice, and do not pity the poor missionary. To measure
let him move away from human consolations, Jesus Christ draws near
from him. I'm happy, but sometimes I feel a strange urge
to hear Valriant's dear bell. You will say that I have the
homesickness. I do not believe that. I would rather have nostalgia for
sky. But it must be _merited._

Would you like to accept this poor medal of the Immaculate? Often
I attach it to the trees to perfume the solitudes. Pray for me,
and may God grant you the grace to accomplish this great
commandment of love, in which is all justice, all
greatness, all consolation, all peace and all joy.



October 15.

For several days, I have not opened my journal where I am
promised not to write his name again. The love of God is a grace,
the greatest of all graces, and it is necessary to work
merit. Then, is it the momentum given by a mighty hand? - there is
within me a strange force which pushes me to renounce, to sacrifice.
By receiving the letter from the PS *** (generous soul, that one), I
attach his humble medal to the medallion I wear night and day, and
which contained, with the portrait of my father, his own. Then,
I removed this one and by an effort of which I am not yet
surrendered, I threw him into the fire with his letters.



October 16.

I don't regret what I did, only I still shudder
and ceaselessly I cry because his portrait and his letters are
in ashes.

I wondered with sadness if these tears didn't make my
sacrifice unworthy of God, but today I have been comforted in
reading that when we come back from the fight of mutilated passions and
bloody, but victorious, we can cry over what we
cost - that God will not be offended by our tears any more than
Rome was not offended when the first of the Brutus, returning home
after having sacrificed his two sons to the republic, sat down at his
home deserted and wept.



October 18.

I often think fondly of this young girl who
_wait_ his baptism to die! O grace! happiness of purity!

A few years ago, going through the church of Gésu one evening, I
walked past an altar under which a young saint (Saint Louis of
Gonzaga, I believe) is shown lying on his funeral bed.

I'm just a poor ignorant, but I'm sure this
statue is not a remarkable work. What then did
quiver my soul?

Why did I stay there so long, moved, absorbed as if in front of a
all amiable reality.

So I didn't know too much, but today it seems to me that
this deep charm which had suddenly penetrated me, and which I
could not define, it was the celestial beauty of purity without
task.

Long after I was out of church, this figure so
virginal and so peaceful was still before my eyes, and in spite of myself
my tears flowed a little.

Yet the impression received had been sweet. But we don't touch
never strongly the heart without bringing forth tears.

Many days have passed since then, and is it not strange that
thought of this young girl, who promised to be my protector,
always brings to mind this almost forgotten memory? Not her
will not forget the promise made to the angel who opened the sky to him
who gave it my name.



October 22.

It is a great misfortune that I let my will weaken, but
I am working with all my might to fix it. Like the rest, and
more than the rest, the will is strengthened by exercise: we
get nothing on oneself except by painful and continual
fights.

To abstain from these reveries where my soul softens and wanders, it is me
a constant renunciation.

And yet I know, sweet as they are, the memories of
love do not console - no more than the rays of the moon
heat up. But _finally_, I made a resolution and I'm on it
faithful.

Communion does me good, soothes me to a certain extent.

Sometimes a flash of joy crosses my soul, at the thought that my
father is in heaven, but this ray of light is soon extinguished in the
darkness of faith, and I fall back into my sorrows, sorrows
calm, but deep.



November 5.

Here I am back home after an absence of fifteen days.

I wanted to see her grave again, I wanted to see Mina again, and he's a
someone I had never seen and whose reputation appealed to me.

I only went to Quebec, and, to my extreme regret, I didn't
could see Mina, sick from staying in bed for some time; But I
cried over his grave, _this grave where he is not_, and I would not know
say if they were tears of joy or sadness, so much did I
I felt consoled. Then, I took the train of ... which me
led to the monastery of ...

It is a great pleasure to approach a saint. Between virtue
ordinary and holiness there is an abyss.

In front of her, I felt it, and I forgot to be surprised at this
very humble confidence, of that sacred tenderness which opened its
soul.

Where do angels get this adorable indulgence, this ineffable
compassion for weaknesses they could not understand?

My own mother would not have been so loving. I felt it, and supported
on the gate that separated us, I burst into tears. Her too
wept with heavenly pity. But her face remained serene.

How deep is the peace of this heart given over to love This
divine peace, I felt her envelop me, penetrate me while I
was talking to him.

O radiant faces of the saints! O bright eyes that dive so
before in eternity, and in this other abyss which is called our
heart! who has seen you will never forget you.

But in front of her, I felt neither embarrassment nor embarrassment. On the contrary,
his gaze so calm and so pure spread in my heart I do not know
what a delicious serenity.

Yes, I am happy to have been there. I took away a force, a
light, a perfume, I hope I understood the purpose of life. In
this dear church, in front of the bloody cross which dominates the
tabernacle, I accepted my life as it is, I promised
to fulfill the great commandment of love. O dear asylum of the
prayer and peace!

It is with regret that I left my room where other souls
weak came to seek strength - where the Carmelite Flower
- There, I heard nothing but the murmur of the flowing Yarnaska
all near. This melancholy noise gave me a thousand thoughts
sad and sweet.

The waves of the sea move away to return soon, but the waters
of a river are like time that passes, and never returns.



November 6.

"Woe to him who lets his love stray and languish in this world
who passed; because when it will have passed later, that
will there remain to this miserable soul, an infinite void, and in a
eternal separation from God, an eternal inability to love. ”



November 7.

I spent the afternoon at the entrance to the woods. The sun was gilding them
stripped fields, crickets sang in the withered grass;
however, the fall has done its work well, and we can feel the
sadness everywhere. But what deep serenity mingles with it.

And why, in my mournful calm, should I not also have
serenity?

I told myself that, and with my head hidden in my hands, I thought of
this farewell that we must end up saying to everything - to this great and
languishing farewell as St. Francis de Sales speaks.

Since we must die, it is the happy people who must be pitied.



(Maurice Darville to Angéline de Montbrun)


So you persist in keeping yourself closed, in refusing to
receive, and for you I am no more than a stranger, a
unwelcome.

Angeline, could it be?

O my always loved one, I should have pushed your servants aside and entered
at home despite your orders. But I am not coming to make you
reproaches. I come to beg you to have mercy on me. If you
knew how bitter it is to despise yourself!

O my poor child, your image comes to take hold of me everywhere, your
life so sad is a continual remorse to me.

And yet am I guilty? is it my fault you threw me
my heart in my face?

Angeline, you made me break my word. Yes you have me
reduced to this abjection. But on my honor, I will never have
other woman than you.

Ah! be sure, we do not give ourselves twice with what is
more tender and deeper in my soul, or rather when we
We gave ourselves this way, we never get back to ourselves. If my heart has appeared
cool down. My poor child, deep in the heart of man there is
many miseries, but forgiveness, forgiveness for the love of him who
loved me, who had chosen me.

What! can you not forgive unintentional wrong? Ah you have
well forgotten the promise made to Mina, this solemn promise to
always love me and make me happy.

If you only knew what I have suffered since the terrible evening of our
separation! Oh! how could you humiliate me like this? Am i so
so vile in your eyes?

My God! which will restore our confidence, this unique good in its
sweetness? You say you will never accept a sacrifice.
A sacrifice_...

Angeline, there is one thing I would like to keep silent on forever. But
since you're forcing me to talk about it, I'll do it. Sooner or later,
you know, we only enjoy souls. And besides, the
traces of this cruel evil are disappearing every day. Everyone the
said here and can you ignore it?

My friend, it is I who beg you to have mercy on my life if
sad, of my desolate future. What will become of me if you
abandon me?

Alone I am and alone I will be; I admit it to you, I'm at the end of
my powers. Sadness is a bad counselor, and
I see abysses. Angeline, is your heart so everything
whole in his coffin?

No, my dear orphan, I do not blame you for excess, nor for the duration
of your regrets. Do we know how long a great pain must
last? But I understand your pain, I share it. You
know, you can't doubt it.

My God, why haven't I thought of ordering you not to defer
our marriage! Misfortune willed that neither he nor I thought of it,
but do you think he approves your resolution?

Angeline, it was I who carried you away as if dead from her
body. O God! how much love I loved you, and how much I have
suffered from this horrible inability to console you.

But today, can I do nothing? I assure you that I do not
loved no more when my love snatched you from death; you and I
beg, by the brotherhood of our tears, by this divine
hope that we have to see him again, agree to hear me. Oh!
let me see you! let me talk to you! Could you
always refuse to admit me to you, to his house, which
called me _ his son? _

Last night I leaned against the wall for a long time
garden. I confess that I end up slipping into it.

Once inside, I walked around. The cold light of the sky takes me there
showed everything very sad, very sorry. An icy wind chased the
withered leaves. But the past was here, and who could tell
sadness and the sweetness of my thoughts!

At first, the house seemed to me in complete darkness, but in
approaching I saw that a weak light passed between the shutters of
your room. O dear light! I stayed looking at her for a long time.

Angeline, life must not be a troubled vigil. No you don't
would know how to persevere in such a resolution, and soon, as
Mina said: _The blood of Christ will unite us ._ Christian, have you
understood the strength and suavity of this union? Do you doubt that in
his blood we only found with the immortality of love, the joys
deep mutual forgiveness.

No, you won't have the sad courage to send me back in despair.
I have faith in your heart so tender, so deep.

Yours, forever.

Maurice.



(Angéline de Montbrun to Maurice Darville)


Maurice, forgive me.

This resolution not to receive you, you can give it back to me
even more difficult, even more painful to hold, but you do not
will not change it.

And must I tell you that resentment has nothing to do with it.

Dear friend, I never had one against you. No, you do not have
deceived his noble trust, no you have not failed in your
my word, and I too will keep mine.

But believe me, it's not with a feeling you already have
experienced nothingness, that you would fill the void of your heart and
your days.

I say it without reproach. O my loyal, I have nothing, absolutely nothing
to forgive you.

Why did you love me? Why have I so darkened your
youth? And yet we have been happy together. You
remember how beautiful life seemed to us? But it is not
no _hand which takes the shade, nor which guards the wave._

My dear friend, we had forgotten it. Tell me, if this
enchantment of love and happiness would have continued, that
would we have become? How could we have resigned ourselves to
die? But the prestige quickly faded, and we know
now that life is a pain.

No doubt, divine goodness did not want it to be without
consolations, and our poor tenderness remains the best
easing of our sorrows. But no one chooses his path and
sweeteners are not for me.

No, if the God of all goodness made me go through such cruel
pains, it is not so that I recover from the ailments and
joys of this world. I see it clearly since I know you
here; and a strange force carries me back to that moment when my dying father
drew me to him after his supreme communion: “Savior love,
he repeated, hugging my head weakly to his chest, Love
Savior, I give it to you, O Lord Jesus, take it, O Lord
Jesus, console her, strengthen her ”. And at this hour of agony, a
strength, a supernatural sweetness spread in my soul. All my
revolts melted into adoration. I accepted the separation. I myself
prostrated before the cross, I received it as from the hands of Christ
himself. And still today, he presents it to me. I see and I
feel that he asks me for complete renunciation, that I must be his
alone.

Maurice, it is He who has led everything, it is his will that
separate. This word, my father told me at the hour of his
anguish, and I repeat it to you. Ah! I felt my weakness.

To be disillusioned is not to be detached. My friend you
know, the stripped tree still sticks to the earth.

Oh! as we are made! but divine will gives strength
of the sacrifices it commands. Please don't get down
worried about my future. It is for God to dispose of it: happiness and
sadness debilitated me very much; but if I'm brave, if I
am faithful, before it is long I will have peace.

And you too will soon be consoled.

Why cry? This happiness of the earth, don't we know
poverty, even when we could have it in its wealth - this
who is not. No, the enchanted dream cannot be resumed. And
yet how sweet life with you would be to me! Despite the
trouble my heart, it is a deep joy to me that you are
came. The feeling that you keep me, for me is a flower
on ruins, it is a touching echo of the past. The past!

Do you remember that romance you sang about remembering,
who is nothing and who is everything? Ah! whatever happens, forget
not. And be blessed for what you have done for him. I never
will not forget with what respect you mourned her, nor your
regrets so sharp, so sincere. Oh, how good you were! like you
were tender! I know you still would be. But who is it
only reach the sky with blood, and those have no right to
complain.

Maurice, I give you to Jesus Christ who alone loves us as we do
need to be loved. Everywhere and without ceasing, I will pray to him for
you.

And, since it must be said, farewell, my dear, my intimately dear,
farewell!

When I was a child, my father, to encourage me to give up
of every day, told me that for God there is no sacrifice
too small; and today, I feel it, he tells me that for God, he
is not too great a sacrifice.

After all, my friend, by sacrificing everything, we sacrifice very little
thing. Do I need to tell you that nothing on earth, do we
will ever satisfy? Ah! be sure, by consecrating the union of spouses,
the blood of Christ does not assure them of the immortality of love, and
whatever we do, resignation is always the big one
difficulty, as it is the great duty.

Without doubt, all this is sad, and sadness has its dangers.
Who knows it better than me? But, Maurice, no cowardly weaknesses.
Spare me this supreme pain; that I never blush
to have loved you!